“The brutal soldiers exulted over their victim, and then slowly retraced their steps. Hitherto I had been silent, but now wrought up to a pitch of frenzy, I raved with desperate madness, entreating them to return and release me from my misery. In a few minutes they halted, and a dead silence ensued. Again I shrieked, and the rocky vaults prolonged the sound, as if a thousand voices joined my cries. The guard growled out their imprecations and departed. In vain I tried to get upon my feet; every effort increased my anguish, and as I extended my hands upon the stone floor of my cell, they fell upon some slimy reptile that filled me with abhorrence and with disgust. After repeated painful struggles, I crawled to the door; but receded on finding my hands immersed in what I first imagined to be water, but a heavy groan and then the tremulous gurgling of the breath in the throat of the dying man, convinced me it was blood. I called to him, but no answer was returned; I spoke with tenderness, mentioned who I was, but still all was silent except the groans of the wretched sufferer. Oh! how did I pour out my heart in prayer, for heaven to support me under the accumulated load of horror, or to remove me from existence. “In about an hour afterwards, as near as I can conjecture, the door was violently shaken by his struggles; a sudden shriek, with the grinding of the teeth, and then a heavy deep-drawn sigh, told me the last efforts of frail mortality were over. “But why need I enumerate the trials I underwent, the sufferings I endured. My daily scanty pittance was brought by an individual, upon whom every attempt to gain a single word was unavailing; so that at last I refrained from speaking. Often have I been compelled to wait hours beyond my time, racked with hunger and burning with feverish thirst. Once in rising too eagerly, I dashed the jug from the jailer’s hand, and no entreaties could move him to supply me with more. My raging thirst brought on delirium, and I fell into a lethargic stupor. Well do I remember it,--sweet dreams came over me, and I fancied I was ranging through some lovely meadows, where the eddying streamlet murmured over its shingly bed, clear and transparent as crystal. All the friends of my youth were surrounding me, and I heard their sweet welcomes to my home; my mother pressed me to her heart; my father grasped my hand with joy, whilst sisters and brothers hung in my embrace, and wept with rich delight. Then we sat down to the feast, and every luxury which could refresh the grief-worn prisoner was eagerly devoured. Oh! the agony of awaking from such a dream! Scorched with fever, and parched with burning heat,--it is impossible to picture it.