was screwing his eye to peer
at this grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human
finger very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe
and hook it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly
blackened and blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something
human spoke down the tube, though the words were not clear.

"Who is that?" asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and
quite resolved not to spoil any chance.

After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
Argyllshire accent:

"I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?"

Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a
space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety:
"I vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I
have met for ten million years."

"I know what you mean," answered the other. "It has been awful. For a
mortal month I have been alone with God."

Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: "Alone
with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is."

But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: "Alone with
God, were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather
monotonous?"

"Oh, no," said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; "it was a great deal too
exciting."

After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: "What do you really
hate most in your place?"

"You'd think I was really mad if I told you," answered Turnbull,
bitterly.

"Then I expect it's the same as mine," said the other voice.

"I am sure it's not the same as anybody's," said Turnbull, "for it has
no rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest
that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the
damned cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?"

"Not now," replied MacIan with serenity. "I've pulled it out."

His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.

"I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head," continued the
tranquil Highland voice. "It looked so unnecessary."

"You must be ghastly strong," said Turnbull.

"One is, when one is mad," was the careless reply, "and it had worn a
little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out I can't discover
what it was for. But I've found out something a long sight funnier."

"What do you mean?" asked Turnbull.

"I have found out where A is," said the other.

Three wee