big oak door, banged it, rattled it, kicked it, and abused it. It stood firm.
The next thing he did was also a thing which any of us would have done, though it had more sense in it—he shouted at the top of his voice. He kept up that shouting in a number of incongruous forms in which the word "Help" occurred with a frequency that would have been irritating to a hearer had there been one, but audience he had none.
He knocked furiously at either wall of the long room. He turned at last exhausted, and perceived with delight a low door, which he had failed at first to notice; it was in the gloom of the far corner. He made for this door. To his delight it opened easily, and revealed beyond it nothing but darkness. There were matches upon the mantelpiece; he struck one and peered within. He saw a neat little bed, not made by expert women, rather (he thought) by these jailers of his, and through a farther door he saw what might be a bathroom, fairly comfortably appointed.
Such was Professor Higginson's prison. It might have been worse, and to the pure in heart prison can be no confinement for the soul. But either Professor Higginson's heart was not pure or something else was wrong
