and many voicesamong which, the soft and compassionate

voices of women were conspicuousgave him good wishes and

encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to render the

thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler’s hand; and the

apparitions vanished from his sight for ever.

The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When

they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already

counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they

passed into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not

dark.

“Yours,” said the gaoler.

“Why am I confined alone?”

“How do I know!”

“I can buy pen, ink, and paper?”

“Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then.

At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more.”

There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the

four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through

the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him,

that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and

person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled

with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same

wandering way, “Now am I left, as if I were dead.” Stopping then,

to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling,

and thought, “And here in these crawling creatures is the first

condition of the body after death.”

“Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five

paces by four and a half.” The prisoner walked to and fro in his

cell, counting its measurements, and the roar of the city arose like

muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. “He

made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner

counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his

mind with him from that latter repetition. “The ghosts that

vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the

appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the

embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her

golden hair, and she looked like... Let us ride on again, for God’s

sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake!...

He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.... Five paces by

four and a half.” With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from

the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster,

obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city

changed to this extentthat it still rolled in like muffled drums,

but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose

above them.

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Chapter XXXII

THE GRINDSTONE