as an eyesore to the new groom, who took
immediate measures for removing it. He was at work at it a whole day and
then left it. Returning a week later to his task, he thrust the prongs
of his pitchfork through a pane of glass which lay hidden by the rubbish
heap, and heard not only the crash and fall of the glass itself, but
a startled cry. A peasant was in charge of the cart which was carrying
away the refuse heap, and Robert Hinge took no apparent notice of this
cry. He knew that the fortress was a prison. He had heard queer stories
about the treatment the Austrians gave their prisoners. His interest
was awakened, and his fancy began to be excited. When he had filled the
cart, and the peasant had gone away, Hinge cleared from the wall the
remainder of the heap, and found that he had laid bare a grated window
almost on a level with the ground. The glass was so thickly incrusted
with filth as to be as opaque as the wall by which it was surrounded,
but at the broken pane a face appeared. The man in telling me the story
was honestly moved. He could not describe the condition of the man he
saw without imprecations on his jailer and the whole country that held
them. He told me that the prisoner's hair grew to his waist, and was of
a dreadful unwholesome gray; that his beard and mustache were matted,
his eyes were sunken, and his face was unwashed and of the color of
stale unbaked bread. The man spoke with difficulty, but had a fair
knowledge of English, though he seemed unused to it. He had inhabited
that hole in the earth for years. How many years he did not know until
Hinge, in answer to his questions, told him the date of the year and the
day of the month. The conversation was interrupted by the coming of
an officer, and Hinge covered up the window before anything was seen.
Afterwards he broke a few more panes and heaped clean straw against
the wall to hide the window, but in such a fashion as to admit air and
light. Many hundreds of times he had sat outside his stable door within
arm's-length of the prisoner, and had listened to him while he talked.
They had a preconcerted signal at which the prisoner instantly ceased
to speak. Food and water were thrust in upon the unhappy man at regular
intervals, but he was never visited, and lived a horrible, lonely death
in life there, which made the flesh creep to hear of. The stench of
the chamber Hinge described as something horrible and sickening, and he
thought it a marvel that