Nothing more dank and noisome could be imagined than the dungeon.  Dripping stone-walls, a truckle-bed with a mouldy straw-mattrass, rotting litter scattered about, a floor glistening and slippery with ooze, and a deep pool of water, like that outside, at the further end,—­these constituted the materials of the frightful picture presented to the gaze.  No wonder Sir Jocelyn should recoil, and refuse to enter the cell.

“You don’t seem to like your lodgings, worshipful Sir,” said Grimbald, still grinning, as he held up the lamp; “but you will soon get used to the place, and you will not lack company—­rats, I mean:  they come from the Fleet in swarms.  Look! a score of ’em are making off yonder—­swimming to their holes.  But they will come back again with some of their comrades, when you are left alone, and without a light.  Unlike other vermin, the rats of the Fleet are extraordinarily sociable—­ho! ho!”

And, chuckling at his own jest, Grimbald turned to Sir Giles Mompesson, who, with Joachim Tunstall, was standing at the summit of the steps, as if unwilling to venture into the damp region below, and observed—­“The worshipful gentleman does not like the appearance of his quarters, it seems, Sir Giles; but we cannot give him better,—­and, though the cell might be somewhat more comfortable if it were drier, and perhaps more wholesome, yet it is uncommonly quiet, and double the size of any other in the Fleet.  I never could understand why it should be called the ’Stone Coffin’—­but so it is.  Some prisoners have imagined they would get their death with cold from a single night passed within it—­but that’s a mistaken notion altogether.”

“You have proof to the contrary in Sir Ferdinando Mounchensey, father of the present prisoner,” said Sir Giles, in a derisive tone.  “He occupied that cell for more than six months.  Did he not, good Grimbald?  You had charge of him, and ought to know?”

“One hundred and sixty days exactly, counting from the date of his arrival to the hour of his death, was Sir Ferdinando an inmate of the ‘Stone Coffin,’” said the jailer, slowly and sententiously; “and he appeared to enjoy his health quite as well as could be expected—­at all events, he did so at first.  I do not think it was quite so damp in his days—­but there couldn’t be much difference.  In any case, the worthy knight made no complaints; perhaps because he thought there would be no use in making ’em.  Ah! worshipful Sir,” he added to Sir Jocelyn, in a tone of affected sympathy which only made his mockery more offensive, “your father was a goodly man, of quite as noble a presence as yourself, though rather stouter and broader in the shoulders, when he first came here; but he was sadly broken down at the last—­quite a skeleton.  You would hardly have known him.”

“He lost the use of his limbs, if I remember right, Grimbald?” remarked Sir Giles, willing to prolong the scene, which appeared to afford him infinite amusement.