sh noise with his bunch of keys so that the prisoners could make
their preparations before he performed his duty of looking through the
spyhole to see how his charges were spending their time. Then he went
and procured a big bottle of ink and a packet of foolscap paper for
Number 19.

"Is that enough?" he asked.

"Thank you, thank you!" said Ferleitner; "only now I want a pen."

"Oh no, my dear sir, no. We know that sort of thing. Since the notary
in Number 43 stabbed himself with a steel pen five years ago, I don't
give any more," said the gaoler.

"But I can't write without a pen," returned Konrad.

"That's not my business; I can't let you have a pen," the old man
assured him.

"The judge gave me permission to have one," Konrad remonstrated
modestly.

Then the old man exclaimed afresh: "Do you know this judge, he just
comes up as far as this," and he placed his hand on a level with his
chin. "He crumbles everything up and then we're to spoon it out."
Then he muttered indistinctly in his beard; "I say just this, if they
let a man hang for a week before they hang him, it's a--a--good God! I
can't properly--I can't find any more fine words! If a man puts a
knife into himself, no wonder!"

"I shan't kill myself," said Konrad quietly. "They say I may put my
hopes in the king."

"And you want to write to him? That won't help much, but you can do it
if you like; there's time. For once it's a good thing that our
officials are so slow. If it's any comfort to you, you may know that
they wrong me, too. They won't accept my resignation. Yes, that's how
it is with us," concluded the old man.

Then he went and brought a pot with rusty steel pens. "But don't you
spoil them!" For they were the very pens with which death-warrants had
been signed--the old man had a collection of such things and hoped to
sell it to a rich Englishman. "Does your honour require anything
else?" With those mocking words he left the cell and raged and cursed
all along the corridor. The prisoners thought he was cursing them.

The judge, his hands behind his back, walked up and down his large
study. What a cursed critical case! If the Chancellor had not been
given up by the doctors on the day of the trial, the sentence would
have been different. The petition for mercy! Would it have any result
except that of prolonging the poor man's torture? Whether in the end
it would not have been better----? Everything would have been