“Shall I go to work now?” he asked, in an awkward, deprecating way. “It will need a light, I suppose.” Christopher took a lantern from the wall and lighted the candle within. “I will go with you myself,” he said. “In these times we trust but few of the keepers where you are going, not even our oldest guard Doudel, who is suspected of having fed a prisoner.” Monsieur Jacques’ heart fell. He had hoped that a common guard would be sent with him, one whom it would be possible to evade for a moment; but Christopher took some keys from the drawer of a desk, and moved toward the interior of the prison. Perhaps in his whole life that brave man had never felt such keen anxiety as stirred every nerve in his body during his descent into those gloomy corridors. How was he to prosecute the investigation he had come purposely to make? By what means was he to reach the particular cell, from which that cry came, with Christopher on the watch? There was not one chance in a hundred that it was the lock that poor prisoner had shaken, with so much violence, that wanted mending; yet a wild hope possessed him that he might be led there. No, he was conducted down a damp corridor that branched off in another direction, and shown into an empty cell, from whose wall the staples had been wrenched out by some desperate man, to whom suffering had given a giant’s strength. CHAPTER LIII. LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS. The disappointment which fell upon Monsieur Jacques was terrible. Still, actuated by a despairing thought that God, in his mercy, would open some way to the truth, he went vigorously to work with a heavy sledge, and drove the staples back into the granite wall with a force that echoed through those vaulted passages like the roar of a wild beast. When this ponderous work was done, he turned upon his companion, and, with a faltering voice, asked if that was enough. Christopher hesitated, and answered, “Follow me, and remember, not a word must be spoken to any prisoner. The man who breaks this rule will stand a fair chance of occupying a cell himself. Am I understood?” Monsieur Jacques took up his tools, muttering that he had nothing to say, and had no wish to talk with any prisoner, but to get out of that unwholesome place as soon as possible. While he was speaking, Christopher turned into a passage he recognized, and Jacques scarcely drew his breath till they came opposite the very door which had so painfully fastened itself on his memory. There the keeper paused, and set down his lantern. “It is seldom we permit any workman to enter a cell in which prisoners are—but this door cannot be opened. It is some days since we have been able to get food or water through, and we must reach him now, or he will starve to death.” Jacques sat down his tools and tried the lock with his hands, but they shook violently, and fell away red with wet rust.