that his careless words had doomed a fellow-man to a painful and
lingering death; never dreaming that while his fingers flew to and
fro over his dainty little keyboard, describing the clever doings of
the unscrupulous foreigner, another man, the victim of his idle
gossip, tapped dying messages on a dreary prison wall.

For the end had come.

Through the evening Sigismund rested wearily on his truckle-bed. He
could not lie down because of his cough, and, since there were no
extra pillows to prop him up, he had to rest his head and shoulders
against the wall. There was a gas-burner in the tiny cell, and by
its light he looked round the bare walls of his prison with a blank,
hopeless, yet wistful gaze; there was the stool, there was the
table, there were the clothes he should never wear again, there was
the door through which his lifeless body would soon be carried. He
looked at everything lingeringly, for he knew that this desolate
prison was the last bit of the world he should ever see.

Presently the gas was turned out.

He sighed as he felt the darkness close in upon him, for he knew
that his eyes would never again see light--knew that in this dark
lonely cell he must lie and wait for death. And he was young and
wished to live, and he was in love and longed most terribly for the
presence of the woman he loved.

The awful desolateness of the cell was more than he could endure; he
tried to think of his past life, he tried to live once again through
those happy weeks with Gertrude; but always he came back to the