locked him up there, and placed a sentry over
him, they left him to his meditations.

The cell, or black hole, for it had those words painted on the door, was
very dark, and having recently accommodated a drunken deserter, by no
means clean. Barnaby felt his way to some straw at the farther end, and
looking towards the door, tried to accustom himself to the gloom, which,
coming from the bright sunshine out of doors, was not an easy task.

There was a kind of portico or colonnade outside, and this obstructed
even the little light that at the best could have found its way through
the small apertures in the door. The footsteps of the sentinel echoed
monotonously as he paced its stone pavement to and fro (reminding
Barnaby of the watch he had so lately kept himself); and as he passed
and repassed the door, he made the cell for an instant so black by the
interposition of his body, that his going away again seemed like the
appearance of a new ray of light, and was quite a circumstance to look
for.

When the prisoner had sat sometime upon the ground, gazing at the
chinks, and listening to the advancing and receding footsteps of his
guard, the man stood still upon his post. Barnaby, quite unable to
think, or to speculate on what would be done with him, had been lulled
into a kind of doze by his regular pace; but his stopping roused him;
and then he became aware that two men were in conversation under the
colonnade, and very near the door of his cell.

How long they had been talking there, he could not tell, for he had
fallen into an unconsciousness of his real position, and when the
footsteps ceased, was answering aloud some question which seemed to have
been put to him by Hugh in the stable, though of the fancied purport,
either of question or reply, notwithstanding that he awoke with the
latter on his lips, he had no recollection whatever. The first words
that reached his ears, were these:

'Why is he brought here then, if he has to be taken away again so soon?'

'Why where would you have him go! Damme, he's not as safe anywhere as
among the king's troops, is he? What WOULD you do with him? Would you
hand him over to a pack of cowardly civilians, that shake in their
shoes till they wear the soles out, with trembling at the threats of the
ragamuffins he belongs to?'

'That's true enough.'

'True enough!--I'll tell you what. I wish, Tom Green, that I was a
commissioned instead of a non-commissioned officer, and that I