I found the thin brose provided more palatable than the soup of the evening before, and managed to consume a pannikin of it.

As I finished, I perceived that Gib had squatted by my side.

There was clearly some change in the man, for he gave the woman Isobel some very ill words when she started ranting.
Up in the little square of window one could see a patch of clear sky, with white clouds crossing it, and a gust of the clean air of morning was blown into our cell.

Gib sat looking at it with his eyes abstracted, so that I feared a renewal of his daftness.
"Can ye whistle 'Jenny Nettles,' sir ?" he asked me civilly.
It was surely a queer request in that place and from such a fellow.

But I complied, and to the best of my skill rendered the air.
He listened greedily.