hink of Mary Cavendish, so hedged
about was I as to my freedom of thought and love by my physical
ills, for verily after a man has been out of consciousness with a
wound, it is his body which first struggles back to existence, and
his heart and soul have to follow as they may.

So I lay there knowing naught except the weary pain of my wounds,
and that sense of stiffness which forbade me to move, and the
fretful heat of that fierce west sunbeam, and the buzzing swarm of
flies, for some little time before the memory of it all came to me.

Then indeed, though with great pain, I raised myself upon my elbow,
and peered about my cell, and called aloud for some one to come,
thinking some one must be within hearing, for the sounds of life
were all about me: the tramp of horses on the road outside, the even
fall of a workman's hammer, the sweet husky carol of a slave's song,
and the laughter of children at play.

So I shouted and waited and shouted again, and no one came. There
was in my cell not much beside my pallet, except a little stand
which looked like one from Drake Hill, and on the stand was a china
dish like one which I had often seen at Drake Hill, with some mess
therein, what, I knew not, and a bottle of wine and some medicine
vials and glasses. I was not ironed, and, indeed, there was no need
of that, since I could not have moved.

Between the wound in my leg and various sword-cuts, and a general
soreness and stiffness as if I had been tumbled over a precipice, I
was well-nigh as helpless as a week-old babe.

I called again, but no one came, and presently I quit and lay with
the burning eye of the sun in my face and that pestilent buzz of
flies in my ears, and my weakness and pain so increasing upon my
consciousness, that I heeded them not so much. I shut my eyes and
that torrid sunbeam burned red through my lids, and I wondered if
they had found out aught concerning Mary Cavendish, and I wondered
not so much what they would do with me, since I was so weak and
spent with loss of blood that nothing that had to do with me seemed
of much moment.

But as I lay there I presently heard the key turn in the lock, and
one Joseph Wedge, the jailor, entered, and I saw the flutter of a
woman's draperies behind him, but he shut the door upon her, and
then without my ever knowing how he came there, was the surgeon,
Martyn Jennings, and he was over me looking to my wounds, and
letting a little more blood to decrease my feve