I turned and picked them up. There was a rug, a mess tin, and a wooden spoon. "What am I to do with these?" I asked. "You will want them upon your journey." "My journey! Where, then, am I going?" "To the mines." "To Siberia?" I gasped. "Yes," he answered, adding, "Come, follow me." I left the side of the dead prisoner and accompanied him back to my own cell. I would have preferred death ten thousand times, for I knew, too well, that for the Russian convict is reserved that punishment which is tantamount to death by slow torture--a living tomb in the quicksilver mines beyond Tomsk. When sent under the earth he never again sees the sunlight or breathes the fresh air, until a year or so afterwards when he is brought to the surface to die. Racked by the frightful pain which quicksilver produces, gaunt as skeletons, and with hair and eyebrows dropping off, convicts are kept at labour under the lash by taskmasters who have orders not to spare them, working eighteen hours at a stretch, and sleeping the remaining six in holes in the rock--mere kennels, into which they must crawl. A sentence of Siberian hard labour always means death, for the Government are well aware it is an absolute impossibility to live longer than five years in such horrible torture in the depths of the earth. To this terrible existence was I consigned. Was it surprising, therefore, that I hoped--nay, longed--for death instead? CHAPTER THIRTEEN. GRAVEN ON THE WALL. I walked back to my cell as one in a dream. Engrossed with my own reflections, I neither saw nor heard anything until I found myself seated alone in the dark, damp chamber, with the maddening thought of Vera's treachery and triumph torturing and goading me to despair. I covered my face with my hands, and strove to forget the present and to review the past. As I pondered, the recollection of my childhood's days came back to me. I saw the grey-haired stately lady, my mother, whom I loved, whose counsel I had ofttimes wisely taken, but who now, alas! was no more. I saw myself a laughing schoolboy, and later, a rollicking student, one of a crowd in the Latin Quarter; then a young man hard at work with my pen in a tall old house in one of the Inns of Court, burning the midnight oil and striving day and night towards the coveted Temple of Fame. Later, a man of ample means, and afterwards--a convict. Next morning, after the warder had paid his matutinal visit and I had appeased my hunger, I naturally turned to the inscriptions as my sole means of occupation; for besides being anxious for anything wherewith to occupy my mind, however trivial, I was also curious to ascertain whether the mysterious device upon the wall really bore a resemblance to the seal, or whether it was only in my distorted imagination that the similarity existed.