streamed in through the narrow opening above my head, and, striking on
the opposite wall, gleamed there for a few minutes in radiant and
dazzling beauty, passing obliquely upward the while until it grew
narrower and more narrow, dwindled down to the thinness of a thread, and
finally vanished. I had witnessed the last gleam of earthly sunlight I
was ever to see.

Darkness now rapidly gathered round me; and in a short time it was
impossible for me to distinguish anything but the faint outline of the
loophole in the wall above me.

As night descended upon the earth, a soft and gentle breeze sprang up,
which, entering through the loophole, cooled my fevered blood and
permitted me so far to regain control of myself that I once more became
cognisant of outward sounds, of which I seemed to have lost all
consciousness from the moment I had been thrust into that horrible
dungeon. There was the roar of the artillery, the fainter boom of our
own guns, the occasional rattle of vehicles along the street, the rumble
of heavy ammunition waggons, the frequent clatter of horses' feet; and,
now and then, the sound of a human voice. Gradually most of these
sounds lulled, and became more infrequent, until finally they died away
altogether; and long intervals of perfect silence ensued, broken only by
the occasional crashing discharge of a single gun. And so I knew that
night had fallen upon the earth without as well as upon the unhappy
prisoner within.

After the lapse of some hours, as it seemed to me, I became conscious of
a faint sound outside my prison-door; a key rattled in the lock, the
bolts jarred back; the door was flung open; a stream of light flooded
the cell, blinding me for the moment; and when my eyesight returned
Guiseppe the Corsican was standing in the chamber, in the act of closing
the door carefully behind him.

Placing upon the floor the small hand-lamp which he carried, he flung
himself carelessly down on the stone bench; and, with an evil smile
hovering about his lips, began to jeer at my unfortunate situation.

"Well, signor Englishman," he commenced, "how like you your new lodging?
It is scarcely so large, and I fear it is not as elegantly furnished,
as Francesca Paoli's silken chamber, is it? But never mind, my friend;
your stay here is but short; and I daresay you can contrive to put up
with a little temporary inconvenience in the meantime, can you not?"

"Are you here to make sport of my misfortunes?"