I sank upon the old couch of straw, untouched
since I had left it; and when the door shut upon me, desponding,
aching in all my body, now feverish and now shivering, my ankle in
great pain, I could bear up no longer, and I bowed my head and fell
a-weeping like a woman.
XVIII
THE STEEP PATH OF CONQUEST
Now I am come to a period on which I shall not dwell, nor repeat
a tale of suffering greater than that I had yet endured. All the
first night of this new imprisonment I tossed on my wretched bed
in pain and misery. A strange and surly soldier came and went,
bringing bread and water; but when I asked that a physician be sent
me, he replied, with a vile oath, that the devil should be my only
surgeon. Soon he came again, accompanied by another soldier, and
put irons on me. With what quietness I could I asked him by whose
orders this was done; but he vouchsafed no reply save that I was
to "go bound to fires of hell."
"There is no journeying there," I answered; "here is the place
itself."
Then a chain was roughly put round my injured ankle, and it gave me
such agony that I turned sick, but I kept back groaning, for I would
not have these varlets catch me quaking.
Pages:
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86