This was the "hole," and the door was opened and
Peter shoved inside into utter darkness. The door banged, and the
bolts rattled; and then silence. Peter sank upon a cold stone floor,
a bundle of abject and hideous misery.
These events had happened with such terrifying rapidity that Peter
Gudge had hardly time to keep track of them. But now he had plenty
of time, he had nothing but time. He could think the whole thing
out, and realize the ghastly trick which fate had played upon him.
He lay there, and time passed; he had no way of measuring it, no
idea whether it was hours or days. It was cold and clammy in the
stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the
temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving
device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own
tormented mind did the rest.
And surely no more tormented mind than the mind of Peter Gudge had
ever been put in that black hole. It was the more terrible, because
so utterly undeserved, so preposterous. For such a thing to happen
to him, Peter Gudge, of all people--who took such pains to avoid
discomfort in life, who was always ready to oblige anybody, to do
anything he was told to do, so as to have'an easy time, a
sufficiency of food, and a warm corner to crawl into! What could
have persuaded fate to pick him for the victim of this cruel prank;
to put him into this position, where he could not avoid suffering,
no matter what he did? They wanted him to tell something, and Peter
would have been perfectly willing to tell anything--but how could he
tell it when he did not know it?
The more Peter thought about it, the more outraged he became.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32