The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio) 1892-1912, 1909-01-25

tinuous hunt for missing button
would drag the mind away from the
black abyss of insanity.
Gilhlan, cropping blindly in the
darkness, remembered the advice. He
ripped button from his striped
jacket and tossed II into the thick air.
Listening intently he heard It fall in
a fsr.away corner OF the cell, and
on hands and knees he started to
search for It.
The sport fascinated him. When he
discovered the metal disc he spun II
up and again started In pursuit. The
leaden hours rolled by slowly, but the
game continued Gifllan blessed the
button. He began to feel a love for 1t.
He called to 1t when 1t hid from him
in the cracks between the cold stones,
and he cried Historically over 1t when
he discovered II after a long search.
IL seemed alive. IL became a com.
paniOn to him in that horrible, black
vault into which not one single ray of
light came to pieTece the darkness.
II was on the evening of the sixth day
that Nemesis clinched with Gilfllan.
The prisoner had, up to that moment,
! thrown the button up thousand
times and found 1t In each occasion by
laboriously searching on hands and
/ knees. But on the evening of the
sixth day a peculiar incident hap.
pened.
The prisoner threw the button up
into the blackness, but IT did not come
| down again.
Gilhllan waited with aching ears TO
hear the tinkle of the metal on the
stone, but he heard no sound. The
button didn't fall, and the silence that
| filed the cell as he stood listening,
hurt him. He clenched his teeth to
strangle a scream of terror that fear
| pushed to his lips. What was wrong?
The prisoners trembling knees gave
way under him and he sank to the
floor. His hands moved out into the
darkness and commenced to feel the
stone flooring, but every nerve was
taut.
On every other occasion when he
had tossed up the button he had heard
IL fall distinctly, but he was certain
that there was not the slightest sound
after the last toss. Still, he would
search.
The hot hands crept over the stones
| eagerly, feverishly. The fingers
worked madly, but the bare floor
Knocked their search. There was no
button. Again and again and again
the prisoner searched. Through the
cold hours OF the night he crawled
backwards and forwards till each join.
ing between those tombstones of Hope
seemed familiar to his blind fingers
But there was nothing on the floor
The button had not fallen after he
had jerked II into the blackness.
Gilffllan tried to think. Why had Il
not returned? he astga himself
What had happened to Il? There was
nothing above him but bare walls, and
yet! Where was IT,. Again and
again he whispered the question OF the
thick black pail that seemed to heave
around him, He asked Il in a louder
tone. He screamed Il. Then some
thing like laugh came from one
corner Of that Misunderstanding pit OF
horror, and Gilhlan was panic
| stricken.
Imagination, contrary to the opinion
| OF scientific experts lies in the stom.
| aCh, and the bread and water diet that
| Gilfillan had been receiving was not
sufficiently weighty to keep 1t down
The prisoner began to see things The
thick waves of curse-incrusted dark.
ness welled up from the corners and
smothered him. Invisible hands
grasped his throat and strangled him
He kicked at the door leading into the
dark corridor opening into the main
wing, but Warder Tomllnson, of the
night watch was slightly deaf, and
did not hear him. He raced around
the cell with Terror-grasping, gibber.
ing Terror-at his heels, and the
stone vault echoed to his wild screams
of agony.
When Warder Dunworth opened the
door on the morning of the seventh
day TO acquaint Gilfillan OF the fact
that his term In dark cell was over,
the hands OF Terror had completed
their work. The prisoners face was
battered beyond recognition where
he had dashed against the walls in his
mad race, and he shrieked wildly
when the warder attempted to drag
him into the light.
Eleven years afterwards, when an
enlightened prison controller did away
with the dark cells, the masons, tear.
ing down the black vault at Enlota,
found jacket button securely
fastened In a thick cobweb near the
ceiling of the cell. But in the Grim.
inal ward OF Enlota insane asylum a
prisoner still spends his days and
nights hunting for that button.
. GSes