Charlevoix county herald., 1909-02-13

be considerably relieved. He advised
all prisoner friends who might visit
The Doghole" to toss a button into
the air, and while away the time by
searching for it on hands and knees
he recognized the fact that con-
tinuous hunt for missing button
would drag the mind away from the
F., black abyss of insanity.
Gilfllan cropping blindly in the
| darkness, remembered the advice. He
ripped button from his striped
jacket and tossed 1t into the thick air.
| Listening intently he heard it fall in
far-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 it
up and again started in pursuit. The
leaden hours rolled by slowly, but the
game continued. Gilfillan blessed the
button He began to feel love for 1t.
He called to it when it hid from him
in the cracks between the cold stones,
and he cried Historically over it when
he discovered it after long search.
1t seemed alive. 1t became a COM
panion to him in that horrible, black
vault into which not one single ray Of
light came to pierece the darkness.
1t was on the evening of the sixth day
that Nemesis clinched with Gilfillan.
The prisoner had, up to that moment,
thrown the button up a thousand
times and found it in each occasion by
| knees. But on the evening OF the
sixth day a peculiar incident hap
pened.
The prisoner threw the button UP
into he blackness, but it did not come
down again.
Gilfllan 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
filled the cell as he stood listening
hurt him. He clenched his teeth to
strange scream of terror that fear
pushed to his lips. What was wrong?
The prisoners trembling knees gave
floor. His hands moved out into the
darkness and cC,rmenced TO feel the
stone flooring, bit every nerve was
taut.
On every other occasion when he
had tossed up the button he had heard
1t fall distinctly, but he was certain
that there was not the slightest sound
Of t.a, he 81
search.
The hot hands crept over the stones
eagerly feverishly. The fingers
worked madly, but the bare floor
Knocked their search. There was ne
button. Again and again and again
the prisoner searched. Through the
cold hours of the night he crawleo
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 it into the blackness.
Gilfillan tried to think. Why had il
not returned? he asked himself
What had happened TO it? 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 it in louder
tone. He screamed it, Then some
thing like laugh came from one
corner of that misunderstanding pit OF
horror and Gilfllan 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 il 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 Tomlinson, 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
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
J him into the light.
Eleven years afterwards, when ar
enlightened prison controller dYd away
with the dark cells, the masons, tear
ing down the black vault at Enlota
found jacket button securely
fastened in 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