A shockingly protracted interval did that fall fill up: the five
hundred, gazing as at some wonder in heaven, did not, could not,
breathe: the outraged heart seemed to rend the breast in a shriek.
Would it _never_ end, that somersault? Wheeling he came.

In reality it occupied much less than a minute: and now he is no
more ethereal, but has grown, is grossly near, attended by the
raving winds of his travelling: is arrived. And the thump of his
coming was heard. As he touched the earth he jerked out circular....

Here was a tragedy remembered many a year at Colmoor, and always
with feelings of the deepest awe.




XVII

OLD TOM'S LETTER


The fate of Bates filled Hogarth's mind with a gloom so funereal,
that now his strength, his great patience, all but succumbed.

One evening, while his broom lay stuck out under the notch of his
cell-door in order that Warder Black might count him, he took his
tin knife, and began to scratch over the hills and valleys of his
corrugated wall some shining letters: