involuntarily took it in, strove spasmodically to close their passages
against it. It was impossible for one unaccustomed to such an atmosphere,
to breathe, save by gasps. Bement stopped at one of the doors, and as
he was raising the bar across it, he said:

"Thar ain' on'y one feller 'sides Fennell in here. He's a Stockbridge
feller, too. The cell ain' so big's the others. Genally thar's three
or four together. I'll jess shet ye in, an come back for ye in a
minit."

He opened the door, and as the other stepped in, it was closed and
barred behind him. The cell was about seven feet square and as high.
The floor was a foot lower than the corridor, and correspondingly
damper. It must have been on or below the level of the ground, and the
floor, as well as the lower end of the planks which formed the walls,
was black with moisture. The cell was littered with straw and every
kind of indescribable filth, while the walls and ceiling were mildewed
and spotted with ghastly growths of mould, feeding on the moist and
filthy vapors, which were even more sickening than in the corridor.

Full six feet from the floor, too high to look out of, was a small
grated window, a foot square, through which a few feeble, dog-day
sunbeams, slanting downward, made a little yellow patch upon the lower
part of one of the sides of the cell. Sitting upon a pile of filthy
straw, leaning back against the wall, with his face directly in this
spot, one of the prisoners was half-sitting, half-lying, his eyes shut
as if asleep, and a smile of perfect happiness resting on his pale and
weazened face. Doubtless he was dreaming of the time, when, as a boy,
he played all day in the shining fields, or went blackberrying in the
ardent July sun. For him the river was gleaming again, turning its