an falling on to the brick floor and lying there motionless.
The gaoler was alarmed, and opened the door again. So the man was
clever enough to die quickly? That would be a miscarriage! But the
culprit moved slightly, and begged to be left alone.

And he was alone, once again in this damp room with the wooden bench,
the straw mattress, the water-jug on a table--things which during the
long period of probation he had gazed at a hundred times, thinking of
nothing but "They must acquit me." Out of the planks that propped up
the straw mattress he had put together a kind of table, a work of which
the gaoler disapproved, but he had not destroyed it. High up in the
wall was a small barred window, through which mercifully came the
reflection from an outer opposite wall, now lighted by the sun. The
edge of a steep gabled roof and a chimney could be just seen through
the window, and in between peeped a three-cornered piece of blue sky.
That was the joy of the cell. Konrad did not know that he owed this
room to special kindness. The scanty light from above had been a
comfort, almost a promise, all the weary weeks: "They will send you a
free man out into the sunshine!" By slow degrees that hope was
extinguished in his lonely soul. And to-day? The little bit of
reflection was a mockery to him. He wanted no more twilight. Daylight
was gone for ever--he longed for darkness. Night! night! Night would
be so heavy and dark that he would not behold his misery, even
inwardly. He could not think; he felt stifled, giddy, as if someone
had struck him on the head with a club.

When the gaoler on his rounds peeped through the spy-hole again and saw
the man still lying on the floor, he grew angry. He noisily opened the
little door. "By Jove, are you still there? Number 19! Do you hear?
Is anything the matter?" The last words were spoken almost gently; a
stupid fellow might imagine that he was pitied. But that was not the
case. As a man sows, he reaps.

The prisoner stood up quickly and looked distractedly about him. When
he recognised the gaoler he felt for his hand. He grasped it firmly,
and said hoarsely: "I want to ask something. Send me a priest."

"Oh, at last!" grumbled the old man. "These atheists! In the end they
crawl to the Cross."

"I'm not an atheist," calmly replied the prisoner.

"No? Well, it's all the same. You shall have a father-confessor."

Konrad had not meant a confessor. To set himself