- end_line
- 3075
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.590Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3018
- text
- slanting, till they straightened themselves up out of sight altogether.
It was noon, and no Squire.
“He’s gone a-hunting before breakfast, and got belated,” thought
Israel.
The afternoon shadows lengthened. It was sunset; no Squire.
“He must be very busy trying some sheep-stealer in the hall,” mused
Israel. “I hope he won’t forget all about me till to-morrow.”
He waited and listened; and listened and waited.
Another restless night; no sleep; morning came. The second day passed
like the first, and the night. On the third morning the flowers lay
shrunken by his side. Drops of wet oozing through the air- slits, fell
dully on the stone floor. He heard the dreary beatings of the tree’s
leaves against the mouths of the griffins, bedashing them with the
spray of the rain-storm without. At intervals a burst of thunder rolled
over his head, and lightning flashing down through the slits, lit up
the cell with a greenish glare, followed by sharp splashings and
rattlings of the redoubled rain-storm.
“This is the morning of the third day,” murmured Israel to himself; “he
said he would at the furthest come to me on the morning of the third
day. This is it. Patience, he will be here yet. Morning lasts till
noon.”
But, owing to the murkiness of the day, it was very hard to tell when
noon came. Israel refused to credit that noon had come and gone, till
dusk set plainly in. Dreading he knew not what, he found himself buried
in the darkness of still another night. However patient and hopeful
hitherto, fortitude now presently left him. Suddenly, as if some
contagious fever had seized him, he was afflicted with strange
enchantments of misery, undreamed of till now.
He had eaten all the beef, but there was bread and water sufficient to
last, by economy, for two or three days to come. It was not the pang of
hunger then, but a nightmare originating in his mysterious
incarceration, which appalled him. All through the long hours of this
particular night, the sense of being masoned up in the wall, grew, and
grew, and grew upon him, till again and again he lifted himself
convulsively from the floor, as if vast blocks of stone had been laid
on him; as if he had been digging a deep well, and the stonework with
all the excavated earth had caved in upon him, where he burrowed ninety
feet beneath the clover. In the blind tomb of the midnight he stretched
his two arms sideways, and felt as if coffined at not being able to
extend them straight out, on opposite sides, for the narrowness of the
cell. He seated himself against one side of the wall, crosswise with
the cell, and pushed with his feet at the opposite wall. But still
mindful of his promise in this extremity, he uttered no cry. He mutely
raved in the darkness. The delirious sense of the absence of light was
soon added to his other delirium as to the contraction of space. The
lids of his eyes burst with impotent distension. Then he thought the
air itself was getting unbearable. He stood up at the griffin slits,
pressing his lips far into them till he moulded his lips there, to suck
the utmost of the open air possible.
- title
- Chunk 5