It was these hours of darkness, when the rest of the world was abed, and the long, long hours of daylight in the early summer mornings before it was yet awake, which tried him more than anything else. At such times, when he was tired of reading—and he had never before read so much in so short a space of time—he could do nothing but lie back on his pallet, with his arms curled under his head, and think. The mornings were balmy, soft, and bright. Through the cell-casement, which he could open at will, he could hear the merry twittering of innumerable sparrows. He could see the slow shadows sliding, inch by inch, down the gray stone walls of the prison yard, as the sun rose higher in the sky. Now and then the sweet west wind brought him faint wafts of fragrance from the hay-slopes just outside the prison gates. Sometimes he could hear the barking of a dog on some far far-off farm, or the dull lowing of cattle; sounds which reminded him that the great world, with its life, and hopes, and fears, lay close around him, though he himself might have no part therein. At such moments he often felt that he would give half of all he was possessed of for an hour’s freedom outside those tomb-like walls—for one hour’s blessed freedom, with Edith by his side, to wander at their own sweet will through lane and coppice and by river’s brim, with the free air of heaven blowing around them, and nothing to bound their eyes but the dim horizon, lying like a purple ring on woods and meadows far away. Little wonder that during these long, solitary hours a sense of depression, of melancholy even, would now and then take possession of him for a little while; that his mind was oppressed with vague forebodings of what that future, which was now drawing near with sure but unhasting footsteps, might possibly have in store for him. He had just won for himself the sweetest prize which this world had in its power to offer him, and his very soul shrank within him when he thought that he had won it only, perhaps, to lose it for ever in a few short weeks. Bitter, very bitter—despairing almost—grew his thoughts at such times; but he struggled bravely against them, and never let them master him for long. When the clock struck six, and the tramp of heavy feet was heard along the corridors, and the jingling of huge keys—when the warders were changed, and the little wicket in his cell door was opened and a cheerful voice said, “Good-morning, sir. Hope you have slept well,” Lionel’s cheery response would ring out, clear and full, “Good-morning, Jeavons. I’ve had an excellent night, thank you.” And Jeavons would go back to his mates and say, “Mr. Dering’s just wonderful. Always the same. Never out o’ sorts.”