Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/112

 the eyelet holes. A strong fit of shuddering seized the poor man, he saw in those two weird forms the familiars of the Holy Inquisition. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and at a sign from one of them, unable to resist, he silently followed with tottering feet. All round the high walls of the houses rose menacingly, not a light in any window; above, the clouds hung low and lurid, while a deep muttering of distant thunder filled the still air. Onward his ghostly attendant bore him, seeming to glide without perceptible effort over the rough flagged pavement, his own heavy feet giving forth a muttered resonance on the pathway. In the distance he heard a sound of heavy tramping and loud talking; it was the watch patrolling the streets. Nearer and nearer they came, till he saw the gleam of the lantern at the further end of the street, and a sudden hope of escape rushed to his head, leaving him breathless and half stunned. He would call upon them as they passed, and offer them much money, all he possessed, to release him from these devils. Now the watch was close upon them, was passing, he could plainly hear one telling some coarse joke and the rude laughter it drew forth from his comrades; he strove to call out, but his parched lips refused to form the words, and in a moment they had turned a corner. All was silent again.

On they sped, this strange company, through the inky pall that overspread the city, always passing on, till it seemed to the wretched prisoner that he and his voiceless companions had travelled from the beginning of time, and would do so till the crack of doom, when, on a sudden, his guards stopped before a low doorway set in a vast dead wall, which reached upwards to the clouds. On this door one of the familiars beat a stealthy knock, it swung open inwards and closed behind them; the darkness of without was changed for the gloom of within. They had now entered a long corridor, at the further end of which a lamp hung, shedding a tiny twinkling light; through the whole length of this passage the familiars led Reichenberg, down a long flight of steps; down into deeper and clammier passages, where he could feel the icy moisture dripping from the walls, till at last a door was opened, he was pushed into the darkness, and the door swung to heavily. He listened in a dull unhearing way to the grating sound of heavy bolts drawn to, and he heard the footsteps of the two familiars die away in the distance. Then his voice and strength returned to him, and he rose and threw himself against the door of his cell, screeching and foaming at the mouth. For an hour he raved on, and then, overcome by exhaustion, he sank down on the dark, cold floor of his cell. Hours, days, months passed, he knew not how long; time had no more an existence to him, for no light of day could pierce the solid masonry which surrounded him. But ever there came at intervals footsteps that approached, a grating opened, a loaf of