The door was opened. A gust of hot air came from within as Morton Sims hesitated for a moment upon the threshold. The warm air, indeed, was upon his face, but once again the chill was at his heart. Lean and icy fingers seemed to grope about it. At the edge of what abysmal precipice, and the end of what sombre perspective of Fate was he standing? From youth upwards he had travelled the goodly highways of life. He had walked in the clear light, the four winds of heaven had blown upon him. Sunshine and Tempest, Dawn and Dusk, fair and foul weather had been his portion in common with the rest of the wayfaring world. But now he had strayed from out the bright and strenuous paths of men. The brave high-road was far, far away. He had entered a strange and unfamiliar lane. The darkness had deepened. He had come into a marsh of miasmic mist lit up by pale fires that were not of heaven and where dreadful presences thronged the purple gloom. This was the end of all things. A life of shame closed here--through that door where a living corpse was waiting for him "pent up in murderers' hole." He felt a kindly and deprecating hand upon his arm. "You will find it quite ordinary, really, sir. You needn't hesitate in the very least"--thus the consoling voice of Marriott. Morton Sims walked into the cell. Another warder who had been sitting there glided out. The door was closed. The doctor found himself heartily shaking hands with someone whom he did not seem to know. And here again, as he was to remember exactly two years afterwards, under circumstances of supreme mental anguish and with a sick recognition of past experience, his sensation was without precedent. Some one, was it not rather _something_? was shaking him warmly by the hand. A strained voice was greeting him. Yet he felt as if he were sawing at the arm of a great doll, not a live thing in which blood still circulated and systole and diastole still kept the soul co-ordinate and co-incident. Then that also went. The precipitate of long control was dropped into the clouded vessel of thought and it cleared again. The fantastic imaginings, the natural horror of a kind and sensitive man at being where he was, passed away. The keen scientist stood in the cell now, alert to perform the duty for which he was there. The room was of a fair size. In one corner was a low bed, with a blanket, sheet and pillow. In the centre, a deal table stood. A wooden chair, from which the convict had just risen, stood by the table, and upon it were a Bible, some writing materials, and a novel--bound in the dark-green of the prison library--by "Enid and Herbert Toftrees."