Roy Baron’s first night in a French dungeon!
Each prisoner was provided with a worn blanket, cast off by a French soldier; and wrapped in these the crowd of over three hundred men and boys laid themselves down to rest. Some slumbered silently; some tossed to and fro; some snored loudly; some talked or shouted in their sleep. Roy lay amid the throng, a ragged blanket round him also. At first he had rejected it with scorn; but these subterranean regions were cold and damp, and, shivering, he had at length drawn it round him, as he lay with arms crossed, and face pressed into them. The handcuffs had been removed.
He was not thinking of the bruises which he had received, when the rough blanket-tossers had allowed him to drop upon the stone floor. Bruises to a hardy boy are a small matter. But the desolation of the lad that awful night went beyond bounds, and desperate blank despair took possession of him.
For hours he hardly stirred. He could not sleep. He could only lie in a trance of misery. He saw no gleam of hope, no chance of escape from this terrible place. Yet, to stay on here, week after week, month after month, perhaps even as some had done year after year! Could he bear it? Through all previous troubles Roy had borne up bravely; but at last his spirit gave way beneath the strain.
Molly’s face came up before his mind—not Molly the sedate and ladylike maiden of sixteen, but Molly the little eager girl whom he remembered. O to see her again! Roy pressed his face closer into the folded arms, writhing silently.
Then his mother’s face—he hardly dared to think of that. What would not she suffer? unknowing, indeed, what her boy had to endure; but fearing and conjecturing the worst, so far as she had knowledge to picture that worst. Would any picturings of hers approach the reality?
A wild craving for Denham had him next in its grasp. If Denham had but been arrested too—had but come with him! But that unworthy wish lasted not ten seconds. Upon it came a nobler rush of gladness that Denham was _not_ here. The worn face came up before Roy, as he had seen it but a few days sooner; and below his breath he sobbed in an ecstasy of thankfulness, that at least Denham would be in comparative comfort, that at least he had not to be in this dungeon.