n him and the girl, and how many things done,
suffered, seen--he should have known the outcome. But, taking its rise
in the instinct to protect, which their relations justified, it had
mastered him slowly, not so much against his will as without his
knowledge; until he had awakened one day to find himself possessed by a
fancy--a madness, if the term were fitter--the more powerful because he
was no longer young, and in his youth had known passion but once, and
then to his sorrow. By-and-by, for a certainty, the man's sense of
duty, the principles that had ruled him so long--and ruled more men
then than now, for faith was stronger--would assert themselves. And he
would go back to the Baltic lands, the barren, snow-bitten lands of his
prime, a greyer, older, more sombre man--but not an unhappy man.

Something of this he told himself as he paced up and down the gloomy
chamber, while the flame of the candle crept steadily downward, and his
shadow in the vault above grew taller and more grotesque. It must be
midnight; it must be two; it must be three in the morning. The
loopholes, when he stood between them and the candle, were growing
grey; the birds were beginning to chirp. Presently the sun would rise,
and through the narrow windows he would see its beams flashing on the
distant water. But the windows looked north-west, and many hours must
pass before a ray would strike into his dungeon. The candle was
beginning to burn low, and it seemed a pity to light another, with the
daylight peering in. But if he did not, he would lack the means to
light his fire. And he was eager to do without the fire as long as
possible, though already he shivered in the keen morning air. He was
cold now, but he would be colder, he knew, much colder by-and-by, and
his need of the fire would be greater.

From that the time wore wearily on--he was feeling the reaction--to the
breakfast hour. The sun was high now; the birds were singing sweetly in
the rough brakes and brambles about the Tower; far away on the shining
lake, of which only the farther end lay within his sight, three men
were fishing from a boat. He watched them; now and again he caught the
tiny splash as they flung the bait far out. And, so watching, with no
thought or expectation of it, he fell asleep, and slept, for five or
six hours, the sleep of which excitement had cheated him through the
night. In warmth, morning and evening, night and day differed little in
that sunken room. Sti