It was a wonderfully familiar voice that spoke to him.

“Hello there, Nat!  Want a drink?”

He gulped eagerly at the cool liquid that touched his lips.

“Neil,” he whispered.

“It’s me, Nat.  They chucked me in with you.  Hell’s hole, isn’t it?”

Nathaniel sat up, Neil’s strong arm at his back.  There was a light in the room now and he could see his companion’s face, smiling at him encouragingly.  The sight of it was like an elixir to him.  He drank again and new life coursed through him.

“Yes—­hell of a hole!” he repeated drowsily.  “Sorry for you—­Neil—­” and he seemed to sleep again.

Neil laughed as he wiped his companion’s face with a wet cloth.

“I’m used to it, Nat.  Been here before,” he said.  “Can you get up?  There’s a bench over here—­not long enough to stretch you out on or I would have made you a bed of it, but it’s better than this mud to sit on.”

He put his arms about Nathaniel and helped him to his feet.  For a few moments the wounded man stood without moving.

“I’m not very bad, I guess,” he said, taking a slow step.  “Where is the seat, Neil?  I’m going to walk to it.  What sort of a bump have I got on the head?”

“Nothing much,” assured Neil.  “Suspicious, though,” he grinned cheerfully.  “Looks as though you were running and somebody came up and tapped you from behind!”

Nathaniel’s strength returned to him quickly.  The pain had gone from his head and his eyes no longer hurt him.  In the dim candle-light he could distinguish the four walls of the dungeon, glistening with the water and mold that reeked from between their rotting logs.  The floor was of wet, sticky earth which clung to his boots, and the air that he breathed filled his nostrils and throat with the uncomfortable thickness of a night fog at sea.  Through it the candle burned in a misty halo.  Near the candle, which stood on a shelf-like table against one of the walls, was a big dish which caught Nathaniel’s eyes.

“What’s that?” he asked pointing toward it.

“Grub,” replied Neil.  “Hungry?”

He went to the table and got the plate of food.  There were chunks of boiled meat, unbuttered bread, and cold potatoes.  For several minutes they ate in silence.  Now that Nathaniel was himself again Neil could no longer keep up his forced spirits.  Both realized that they had played their game and that it had ended in defeat.  And each believed that it was in his individual power to alleviate to some extent the other’s misery.  To Neil what was ahead of them held no mystery.  A few hours more and then—­death.  It was only the form in which it would come that troubled him, that made him think.  Usually the victims of this dungeon cell were shot.  Sometimes they were hanged.  But why tell Nathaniel?  So he ate his meat and bread without words, waiting for the other to speak, as the other waited for him.  And Nathaniel, on his part, kept to himself the secret of Marion’s fate.  After they had done with the meat and the bread and the cold potatoes he pulled out his beloved pipe and filled it with the last scraps of his tobacco, and as the fumes of it clouded round his head, soothing him in its old friendship, he told of his fight with Strang and his killing of Arbor Croche.