Mattingley's dungeon was infested with rats and other vermin, he had only
straw for his bed, and his food and drink were bread and water. The
walls were damp with moisture from the Fauxbie running beneath, and a
mere glimmer of light came through a small barred window. Superstition
had surrounded the Vier Prison with horrors. As carts passed under the
great archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes
were so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish
spirits. If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of the
drum-beats and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children stopped
their ears and fled in terror. To the ignorant populace the Vier Prison
was the home of noisome serpents and the rendezvous of the devil and his
witches of Rocbert.

When therefore the seafaring merchant of the Vier Marchi, whose massive,
brass-studded bahue had been as a gay bazaar where the gentry of Jersey
refreshed their wardrobes, with one eye closed--when he was transferred
to the Vier Prison, little wonder he should become a dreadful being round
whom played the lightnings of dark fancy. Elie Mattingley the popular
sinner, with insolent gold rings in his ears, unchallenged as to how he
came by his merchandise, was one person; Elie Mattingley, a torch for the
burning, and housed amid the terrors of the Vier Prison, was another.

Few people in Jersey slept the night before his execution. Here and
there kind-hearted women or unimportant men lay awake through pity, and a
few through a vague sense of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would
lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world
were wakeful through curiosity. Morbid expectation of the hanging had
for them a gruesome diversion. The thing itself would break the daily
monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and