“I have no trinkets to give you.”

He laughed.

“Your shirt or breeches will do.”

“Are men shut up here to starve?”

The jailer shrugged.

“The bread is very bad, and the beans too hard to eat.  We do not furnish the rations; it is not our fault.  The rule here is nothing buys nothing.  But sleep in your breeches while you can.  You will soon be ready enough to eat them.”

I was ready enough to eat them then, but forbore to let him know it.  The whole place was damp and foul.  We passed along a corridor less than four feet wide, and he unlocked a cell from which a revolting odor came.  There was no light except what strained through a loophole under the ceiling.  He turned the key upon me, and I held my nose.  Oh, for a deep draught of the wilderness!

There seemed to be an iron bed at one side, with a heap of rags on top. 
I resolved to stand up all night before trusting myself to that couch. 
The cell was soon explored.  Two strides in each direction measured it. 
The stone walls were marked or cut with names I could dimly see.

I braced my back against the door and watched the loophole where a gray hint of daylight told that the sun must be still shining.  This faded to a blotch in the thick stone, and became obliterated.

Tired by the day’s march, and with a taste of clean outdoor air still in my lungs, I chose one of the two corners not occupied by the ill odored bed, sat down, and fell asleep, dropping my cares.  A grating of the lock disturbed me.  The jailer pushed a jug of water into the room, and replaced his bolts.

Afterwards I do not remember anything except that the stone was not warm, and my stomach craved, until a groan in my ear stabbed sleep.  I sat up awake in every nerve.  There was nobody in the cell with me.  Perhaps the groan had come from a neighboring prisoner.

Then a faint stir of covering could be heard upon the bed.

I rose and pressed as far as I could into my corner.  No beast of the wilderness ever had such terror for me as the unknown thing that had been my cell-mate half a night without my knowledge.

Was a vampire—­a demon—­a witch—­a ghost locked in there with me?

It moaned again, so faintly, that compassion instantly got the better of superstition.

“Who is there?” I demanded; as if the knowledge of a name would cure terror of the suffering thing naming itself.

I got no answer, and taking my resolution in hand, moved toward the bed, determined to know what housed with me.  The jug of water stood in the way, and I lifted it with instinctive answer to the groan.