Nathaniel's strength returned to him quickly. The pain had gone from his head and his eyes no longer hurt him. In the dim candle-light he could distinguish the four walls of the dungeon, glistening with the water and mold that reeked from between their rotting logs. The floor was of wet, sticky earth which clung to his boots, and the air that he breathed filled his nostrils and throat with the uncomfortable thickness of a night fog at sea. Through it the candle burned in a misty halo. Near the candle, which stood on a shelf-like table against one of the walls, was a big dish which caught Nathaniel's eyes. "What's that?" he asked pointing toward it. "Grub," replied Neil. "Hungry?" He went to the table and got the plate of food. There were chunks of boiled meat, unbuttered bread, and cold potatoes. For several minutes they ate in silence. Now that Nathaniel was himself again Neil could no longer keep up his forced spirits. Both realized that they had played their game and that it had ended in defeat. And each believed that it was in his individual power to alleviate to some extent the other's misery. To Neil what was ahead of them held no mystery. A few hours more and then--death. It was only the form in which it would come that troubled him, that made him think. Usually the victims of this dungeon cell were shot. Sometimes they were hanged. But why tell Nathaniel? So he ate his meat and bread without words, waiting for the other to speak, as the other waited for him. And Nathaniel, on his part, kept to himself the secret of Marion's fate. After they had done with the meat and the bread and the cold potatoes he pulled out his beloved pipe and filled it with the last scraps of his tobacco, and as the fumes of it clouded round his head, soothing him in its old friendship, he told of his fight with Strang and his killing of Arbor Croche. "I'm glad for Winnsome's sake," said Neil, after a moment. "Oh, if you'd only killed Strang!" Nathaniel thought of what Marion had said to him in the forest. "Neil," he said quietly, "do you know that Winnsome loves you--not as the little girl whom you toted about on your shoulders--but as a woman? Do you know that?" In the other's silence he added, "When I last saw Marion she sent this message to you--'Tell Neil that he must go, for Winnsome's sake. Tell him that her fate is shortly to be as cruel as mine--tell him that Winnsome loves him and that she will escape and come to him on the mainland.'" Like words of fire they had burned themselves in his brain and as Nathaniel repeated them he thought of that other broken heart that had sobbed out its anguish to him in the castle chamber. "Neil, a man can die easier when he knows that a woman loves him!" He had risen to his feet and was walking back and forth through the thick gloom.