since his conviction on the opening day of the sessions) hardly paused till the small hours of the morning.
His name was Creasey. He had been convicted of stabbing his wife (he was twenty years of age), but had never done it; ’twas a pack of lies. But he boasted to Tom of many a thing he had done in his short life; and they were such things as Tom never forgot in his. He lay listening and shuddering upon his bed. Yet when the other seemed to have talked himself out, his own torments only began, and he was grateful when the brute broke out afresh. So the night wore on until one or two in the morning. Then there was a long, unbroken silence; then a sobbing and a shaking, and a burst of frantic prayer from Creasey’s bed; then quiet, then snoring, and the bell of St. Sepulchre’s marking the weary mile-stones of the night.
Tom never slept a wink.
Next morning, in the bottom day-room, which the condemned prisoners had the use of during the day, he rubbed shoulders with a third convict under recent sentence of death; but this was a heavy, sullen, middle-aged man of the name of Carter, who sat all day with his huge head between his cruel hands, and spoke to nobody; nor did either youth venture to speak to him.
Overhead there was another day-room, and eleven more prisoners under sentence nominally capital; but these were morally certain of reprieve; and could be heard playing leap-frog and larking and singing from morning till night.
“I wish we were up there,” said Creasey, mournfully. “But wait a bit: the yard’s for us the same as for them, when it’s exercise time, and then there’ll be a bit o’ fun for us all!”
