It appeared to him a necessity to do so. He could see a
smoke-stained roof of beams and rafters, and on these he fixed his eyes,
thinking that he could hold himself so, as by thin, wiry threads of
sight, from falling again into the pit where all was black or
blood-colour. The pain was appalling, but he thought he had gripped it
at last, and could hold it so, like a wrestler.
As the pain began to resolve itself into throbs and stabs, from the
continuous strain in which at first it had shown itself--a strain that
was like a shrill horn blowing, or a blaze of bluish light--he began to
see more, and to understand a little. There were four or five faces
looking down on him: one was the face of a man he had seen somewhere in
an inn ... it was at Fotheringay; it was my lord Shrewsbury's man.
Another was a lean face; a black hat came and went behind it; the lips
were drawn in a sort of smile, so that he could see the teeth.... Then
he perceived next that he himself was lying in a kind of shallow trough
of wood upon the floor. He could see his bare feet raised a little and
tied with cords.
Then, one by one, these sights fitted themselves into one another and
made sense. He remembered that he was in Derby gaol--not in his own
cell; that the lean face was of a man called Topcliffe; that a physician
was there as well as the others; that they had been questioning him on
various points, and that some of these points he had answered, while
others he had not, and must not.
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