These are melancholy sounds to a quiet listener at any time; but
how melancholy to the watcher by the bed of death!
'There is no air here,' said the man faintly. 'The place pollutes
it. It was fresh round about, when I walked there, years ago; but
it grows hot and heavy in passing these walls. I cannot breathe it.'
'We have breathed it together, for a long time,' said the old
man. 'Come, come.'
There was a short silence, during which the two spectators
approached the bed. The sick man drew a hand of his old fellow-
prisoner towards him, and pressing it affectionately between both
his own, retained it in his grasp.
'I hope,' he gasped after a while, so faintly that they bent their
ears close over the bed to catch the half-formed sounds his pale
lips gave vent to--'I hope my merciful Judge will bear in mind
my heavy punishment on earth. Twenty years, my friend, twenty
years in this hideous grave! My heart broke when my child died,
and I could not even kiss him in his little coffin. My loneliness
since then, in all this noise and riot, has been very dreadful. May
God forgive me! He has seen my solitary, lingering death.
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