At present there was still a little daylight, and through the close cross-bars of the window he could see the crimson and golden cloudlets hovering over the setting sun. He looked away from them with dazzled eyes to examine shudderingly the interior of his prison. It was gloomy enough; the only furniture was a low stone bench, but at one end of the bench a chain was fastened to a ring in the wall, and handcuffs and fetters were attached to the chain. He was almost glad to think that his grandfather had not chained him to that ring in the wall. Sitting down on the stone bench, Chrissie looked up again at the gradually dying colours in the sky, not caring to turn away his eyes from them, as they faded softly away into a quiet grey, which scarcely shed a gleam of light into his dismal cell. Chrissie's courage had held out fairly; but as the darkness gathered, his imagination awoke, and called up all the sleeping, lurking fancies which dwell in every child's young brain. They had been only biding their time, and now trooped out in crowds to haunt the lonely lad. All the stories he had ever heard of people being imprisoned for many, many years, and even starved to death, hurried through his excited mind. There had been a tale told for generations in the village of a man who had killed himself in this very place. And were there not outside the wall, amidst the docks and nettles, the forsaken graves of people too wicked to lie even in death among their better neighbours? Every one dreaded being buried there. Was it true that ghosts of wicked people could not rest in their graves, but came forth at night to visit the places they had once dwelt in, and to tell fearful secrets to those they found alone? How fast the night was coming on, and he was quite alone! Nobody knew where he was, thought poor little Chrissie; nobody but his grandfather, who hated him. He could not climb as high as the window, barred as it was, to show himself through it. He was sorry almost that he had asked that his mother might not know. She would never, never know what had become of him, and he fancied he could see her weeping for him through long years. For he felt certain he should die in this dreary prison, and his grandfather would bury him secretly at night, amid the wicked people who lay under the docks and nettles. The church clock struck ten. It was quite dark by this time, except for the pale, ghostly gleam of the strip of sky seen through the bars of the window. The child passed through long ages of pain and terror before it struck eleven. The dreadful hour of midnight came creeping on towards him. He had never yet been awake at twelve; and twelve at night was the most awful and ghostly hour of all the twenty-four. What would happen then he could not guess; but something beyond all words, and beyond all thought.