place in the cell. It was blue, a very tender blue; when 9009 stared at it hard, the faint taint in the air of the cell-house, with its added Sunday reek of chloride of lime, left him, and he seemed to breathe again that heavy, warm and sweet air which was rolling over the wall, into the prison yard. He sat on the stool, back bent (with his head low he could see more of the blue), his hands hanging between his knees, his face turned upward; gradually his lips loosened, his | heavy jaw dropped, and in his eyes, looking up in that attitude, almost of prayer, there came slowly an expression of longing, of vague patient longing, like a dog’s.
It was very still in the cell-house. At times, as if from far off, there came the attenuated tumult of the yard; in the air was the taint, and the added Sunday reek of chloride of lime. But 9009 was unconscious of this. He looked. Bowed on his seat, he looked up with loose lips and troubled eyes at the little patch of blue sky. After a while a film seemed to creep into it. Gradually this deepened into a whitish opales-
