“Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on the back of the apron.  I suppose I read, ’Two-wheeled hackney carriage:  if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1_s_.’ at least a hundred times.  I got more sensible after a bit, and when we had turned into Gray’s Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of us with ‘Holloway Road and King’s X,’ painted on the steps, and the Colonel saw it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the other, and the Colonel raised his eyebrows.  It showed us that at least the cabman knew where we were going.

“’They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I think,’ the Colonel said.  ’I’d like to have had a look around, wouldn’t you?  This isn’t a cheerful neighborhood, is it?’

“There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew’s Gardens, and a crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant sight in the ride.  I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what eight months in such a place meant.  I believe if I hadn’t pulled myself up sharp, I’d have jumped out into the street and run away.  It didn’t last more than a few seconds, but I don’t want any more like them.  I was afraid, afraid—­there’s no use pretending it was anything else.  I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook, as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and trembles down his sides.

“During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I felt sure that I couldn’t do it—­that I’d go mad if they tried to force me.  The idea was so terrible—­of not being master over your own legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave you buried alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a time-lock on the door set for eight months ahead.  There’s nothing to be afraid of in a stone wall really, but it’s the idea of the thing—­of not being free to move about, especially to a chap that has always lived in the open as I have, and has had men under him.  It was no wonder I was in a funk for a minute.  I’ll bet a fiver the others were, too, if they’ll only own up to it.  I don’t mean for long, but just when the idea first laid hold of them.  Anyway, it was a good lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I’ll whistle, or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful.  And I don’t mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way.  I mean to sit tight and think of all the good times I’ve had, and go over them in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I’ll go over house-parties I have been on, and the times I’ve had in the Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were taking Matabele Land.