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Page 36
"I've waked the first bird," said he to himself, with a smile, "and he's
waked all the rest. Now then for breakfast. That over, I dare say the
Squire will drop in."
But the breakfast was over, and the two flecks of pale light had changed
to golden beams, and the golden beams grew less and less slanting, till
they straightened themselves up out of sight altogether. It was noon,
and no Squire.
"He's gone a-hunting before breakfast, and got belated," thought Israel.
The afternoon shadows lengthened. It was sunset; no Squire.
"He must be very busy trying some sheep-stealer in the hall," mused
Israel. "I hope he won't forget all about me till to-morrow."
He waited and listened; and listened and waited.
Another restless night; no sleep; morning came. The second day passed
like the first, and the night. On the third morning the flowers lay
shrunken by his side. Drops of wet oozing through the air-slits, fell
dully on the stone floor. He heard the dreary beatings of the tree's
leaves against the mouths of the griffins, bedashing them with the spray
of the rain-storm without. At intervals a burst of thunder rolled over
his head, and lightning flashing down through the slits, lit up the cell
with a greenish glare, followed by sharp splashings and rattlings of the
redoubled rain-storm.
"This is the morning of the third day," murmured Israel to himself; "he
said he would at the furthest come to me on the morning of the third
day. This is it. Patience, he will be here yet. Morning lasts till
noon."
But, owing to the murkiness of the day, it was very hard to tell when
noon came. Israel refused to credit that noon had come and gone, till
dusk set plainly in. Dreading he knew not what, he found himself buried
in the darkness of still another night. However patient and hopeful
hitherto, fortitude now presently left him. Suddenly, as if some
contagious fever had seized him, he was afflicted with strange
enchantments of misery, undreamed of till now.
He had eaten all the beef, but there was bread and water sufficient to
last, by economy, for two or three days to come. It was not the pang of
hunger then, but a nightmare originating in his mysterious
incarceration, which appalled him. All through the long hours of this
particular night, the sense of being masoned up in the wall, grew, and
grew, and grew upon him, till again and again he lifted himself
convulsively from the floor, as if vast blocks of stone had been laid on
him; as if he had been digging a deep well, and the stonework with all
the excavated earth had caved in upon him, where he burrowed ninety feet
beneath the clover. In the blind tomb of the midnight he stretched his
two arms sideways, and felt as if coffined at not being able to extend
them straight out, on opposite sides, for the narrowness of the cell. He
seated himself against one side of the wall, crosswise with the cell,
and pushed with his feet at the opposite wall. But still mindful of his
promise in this extremity, he uttered no cry. He mutely raved in the
darkness. The delirious sense of the absence of light was soon added to
his other delirium as to the contraction of space. The lids of his eyes
burst with impotent distension. Then he thought the air itself was
getting unbearable. He stood up at the griffin slits, pressing his lips
far into them till he moulded his lips there, to suck the utmost of the
open air possible.
And continually, to heighten his frenzy, there recurred to him again and
again what the Squire had told him as to the origin of the cell. It
seemed that this part of the old house, or rather this wall of it, was
extremely ancient, dating far beyond the era of Elizabeth, having once
formed portion of a religious retreat belonging to the Templars. The
domestic discipline of this order was rigid and merciless in the
extreme. In a side wall of their second storey chapel, horizontal and on
a level with the floor, they had an internal vacancy left, exactly of
the shape and average size of a coffin. In this place, from time to
time, inmates convicted of contumacy were confined; but, strange to say,
not till they were penitent. A small hole, of the girth of one's wrist,
sunk like a telescope three feet through the masonry into the cell,
served at once for ventilation, and to push through food to the
prisoner. This hole opening into the chapel also enabled the poor
solitaire, as intended, to overhear the religious services at the altar;
and, without being present, take part in the same. It was deemed a good
sign of the state of the sufferer's soul, if from the gloomy recesses of
the wall was heard the agonized groan of his dismal response. This was
regarded in the light of a penitent wail from the dead, because the
customs of the order ordained that when any inmate should be first
incarcerated in the wall, he should be committed to it in the presence
of all the brethren, the chief reading the burial service as the live
body was sepulchred. Sometimes several weeks elapsed ere the
disentombment, the penitent being then usually found numb and congealed
in all his extremities, like one newly stricken with paralysis.
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