“Thank you,” said Richard, mechanically.

“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll set about something at once; sweepin’, or polishin’, or readin’ your Bible.  Don’t brood.  But you will do as you like for this afternoon, since you won’t begin regular business till to-morrow.”

The warder looked keenly round the cell, probably to make sure that it afforded no facilities for suicide; but the gas was not yet turned on, and if it had been, his prisoner was unaware that by blowing it out, and placing the jet in his mouth, more than one in a similar strait to his own has found escape from his prison woes forever.

“I’ll bring you some supper presently,” he added; and with a familiar nod, good-naturedly intended for encouragement, he slammed the iron door behind him.

That he should have become an object of pity and patronage to a man like this would in itself have wounded Richard to the quick had he not been devoured by far more biting cares, and even now it galled him.  His twenty years might possibly, then, by extremity of good luck, be curtailed by five.  By diligent execution of menial drudgery; by performing to some overlooker’s satisfaction his daily toil; by careful obedience and subservience to these Jacks in office, themselves but servants, and yet whose malice or ill-humor might cause them to report him for the most trifling faults, or for none at all, and thereby destroy even this hope—­he might be a free man in fifteen years!  He would, even then, he was told, be still a young man.  But that he would never be young again Richard was well aware.  Within these last three weeks—­nay, within that last hour, he had already lived a life, and one that had aged him beyond the power of years.  High spirits, pleasure, hopefulness, love, and all the attributes of youth, were dead within him for evermore.  For the future he was only to be strong and vigorous in a will that could not have its way for fifteen years at earliest.

Through the grating of his narrow window a few rays of the setting sun were streaming in, and fell upon the bare brown wall behind him.  What a flood of glory they were pouring on the woods of Crompton, now in their autumn splendor—­on the cliffs at Gethin—­on the copse that hid the Wishing Well—­on the tower where he had first clasped Harry in his arms!  He saw them all, and the sunset hues upon them became suddenly blood-red.  He was once more at Gethin, and in imagination taking his revenge upon old Trevethick, and for the moment he was almost happy.  “Pity on his gray hairs?” No, not he—­though the gallows loomed before him, though hell yawned for him, he would slake his thirst in the life-blood of that perjured villain; and as for her, he would drag her by the hair to look upon her father’s corpse.  Where was she?  Ah, with Solomon upon the castled rock; and see!—­he had pushed him from the edge, and there he hung exactly as he himself had hung when Harry had preserved him!  How long would a man hold on like that, even a strong man like Coe, on such a narrow ledge, with the gulls screaming about him?  Not twenty years—­no, nor fifteen!