When I awakened, the cell was getting dark.  I have heard people say the sunset is a lonely time, when fears come out, and apprehensions creep over them... and all their troubles come trooping home.  I wonder what they would think of a sunset which ushered in eighty-four hours of darkness!...  I watched the light fading on the wall, a flickering, sickly glow that paled and faded and died, and left my eyes, weakened now by the long darkness, quite misty and dim.

And then the night, the long night came down, without mercy.

* * *

On one of my light days the guard forgot to bring my soup.  He brought the coffee in the morning, and went out again at once.  I thought he had gone for the bread, but when he did not come, I drank the coffee—­which was hot and comforting.  He did not come near me all day.  It may have been the expectation of food, together with the hot coffee, which stimulated my stomach, for that day I experienced what starving men dread most of all—­the hunger-pain.  It is like a famished rat that gnaws and tears.  I writhed on the floor and cried aloud in my agony, while the cold sweat dripped from my face and hands.  I do not remember what I said...  I do not want to remember...

That night when I saw the light growing dim in the cell, and the long black night setting in, I began to think that there was a grave possibility that this sentence might finish me.  I might die under it!  And my people would never know—­“Died—­Prisoner of War No. 23445, Pte.  M. C. Simmons”—­that is all they would see in the casualty list, and it would not cause a ripple of excitement here.  The guard would go back for another one, and a stretcher...  I shouldn’t be much of a carry, either!

Then I stood up and shook my fist at the door, including the whole German nation!  I was not going to die!

Having settled the question, I lay down and slept.

When I awakened, I knew I had slept a long time.  My tongue was parched and dry, and my throat felt horribly, but my pain was gone.  I wasn’t hungry now—­I was just tired.

Then I roused myself.  “This is starvation,” I whispered to myself; “this is the way men die—­and that’s what—­I am not going to do!”

The sound of my own voice gave me courage.  I then compelled my muscles to do their work, and stood up and walked up and down, though I noticed the wall got in my road sometimes.  I had a long way to go yet, and I knew it depended now on my will-power.

My beard was long and my hair tangled and unkempt.  I should have liked a shave and a hair-cut, but this is part of the punishment and has a depressing effect on the prisoner.  It all helps to break a man down.

* * *

I kept track of the days by marking on the wall each day with my finger-nail, and so I knew when the two weeks were drawing to a close.  The expectation of getting out began to cheer me—­and the last night I was not able to sleep much, for I thought when the key turned next time I should be free!  I wondered if we could by any chance hear what had happened on the battle-front.  Right away I began to feel that I was part of the world again—­and a sort of exultation came to me...