eyes.

At length he thought the time had come for another sort of comfort.

"My friend," he said one day, "it is too plain to me now that you
are dying. Write to the procurator and tell him so. In some cases
men have been allowed to go home to die."

A wild hope seized on poor Sigismund; he sat down to the little
table in his cell and wrote a letter to the procurator--a letter
which might almost have drawn tears from a flint. Again and again
he passionately asserted his innocence, and begged to know on what
evidence he was imprisoned. He began to think that he could die
content if he might leave this terrible cell, might be a free agent
once more, if only for a few days. At least he might in that case
clear his character, and convince Gertrude that his imprisonment had
been all a hideous mistake; nay, he fancied that he might live
through a journey to England and see her once again.

But the procurator would not let him be set free, and refused to
believe that his case was really a serious one.

Sigismund's last hope left him.

The days and weeks dragged slowly on, and when, according to English
reckoning, New Year's Eve arrived, he could scarcely believe that
only seventeen weeks ago he had actually been with Gertrude, and
that disgrace and imprisonment had seemed things that could never
come near him, and death had been a far-away possibility, and life
had been full of bliss.