When I awoke, sore from my hard bed and stiffened by the uncomfortable position in which I lay, it was broad daylight. That the morning was, indeed, well advanced I knew from the single ray of sunlight which streamed in through a grated window high up in the wall opposite me and fell like a bar of gold across the rough stone floor. I was alone. Even in the dark of the previous night I had discovered the sole pretence to furniture in the place. The room itself proved to be a large and almost square apartment, probably during the ordinary occupancy of the house a receptacle for wood or garden produce, but now peculiarly well adapted to the safeguarding of prisoners. The solid stone walls were of sufficient height to afford no chance of reaching the great oak girders that supported the floor above, even had the doing so offered a favorable opening for escape. There were, apparently, but three openings of any kind,--the outside window through which the sunlight streamed, protected by thick bars of iron; a second opening, quite narrow, and likewise protected by a heavy metal grating; and the tightly locked door by means of which I had entered. The second, I concluded, after inspecting it closely, was a mere air passage leading into some other division of the cellar. I noted these openings idly, and with scarcely a thought as to the possibility of escape. I had awakened with strange indifference as to what my fate might be. Such a feeling was not natural to me, but the fierce emotions of the preceding night had seemingly robbed me of all my usual buoyancy of hope. In one sense I yet trusted that Mrs. Brennan would keep her pledge and tell her story to Sheridan; if she failed to do this, and left me to face the rifles or the rope, then it made but small odds how soon it should be over. If she cared for me in the slightest degree she would not let me die unjustly, and to my mind then she had become the centre of all life. Despondency is largely a matter of physical condition, and I was still sufficiently fagged to be in the depths, when the door opened suddenly, and an ordinary army ration was placed within. The soldier who brought it did not speak, nor did I attempt to address him; but after he retired, the appetizing smell of the bacon, together with the unmistakable flavor of real coffee, drew me irrresistibly that way, and I made a hearty meal. The food put new life into me, and I fell to pacing back and forth between the corners of the cell, my mind full of questioning, yet with a fresh measure of confidence that all would still be well. I was yet at it when, without warning, the door once again opened, and Lieutenant Caton entered. He advanced toward me with outstretched hand, which I grasped warmly, for I felt how much depended on his friendship, and resolved to ask him some questions which should solve my last remaining doubts.