In the garden he perceived a lady walking, accompanied by a dog that seemed from its action to be very old, for it moved slowly and feebly without any gambols; and he wondered who she was, and if she might be De Launey's wife, who was "young enough to be his daughter." The garden itself, he could also perceive, since the chapel was no higher than the first floor, formed the interior, or courtyard, of all towers of the prison, and he saw that, by glancing upwards, the windows of other rooms, or cells, were visible to him. Indeed, not only were they visible, but so also was one of the inmates, who, as Bertie observed him, was leaning against his little window frame with his face at the bars as though to catch the air. He was a man somewhat over middle age, with scowling features and long, unkempt hair, and as Bertie regarded him he saw his lips moving as though either he was talking to some fellow-prisoner within the room or muttering to himself. This man fascinated Elphinston so that he could not remove his eyes from off him--for in those other eyes there seemed to be a hell of despair--and, as he thus looked, the man, shifting his gaze, glanced down and across, and so saw him at his lattice. For a moment he stared at Bertie and then made a motion to him with his finger--it seemed as though to bid him stay where he was--and then disappeared from the window to return a moment later with a little piece of light board in one hand to which he pointed with the other. Made more curious than ever by this, Elphinston continued to regard him and his actions fixedly, which were as follows: First the man held up in his right hand--his left still grasping the board--something that appeared like a piece of burnt wood, and then, applying it to the board, drew on it the letter N. Pointing to it, he next drew the letters O, U, and V, then E, then A, then another U, until at last he had spelt out the whole of the word _Nouveau_. Next, after a glance across at Bertie, as though to ask if he understood, and seeing that he did, he again went on with four more letters, making the word _Venu_, and carefully finishing the sentence by drawing, last of all, a solitary note of interrogation, and looking over to Bertie as though awaiting his reply to the question. Receiving from him two or three emphatic nods of the head, he began again, and this time produced a longer sentence, which, by recollecting each word as it had been found, Bertie made out to be (in French, of course), "I have been here twenty-one years."