So now in his forlorn and deserted condition he would try to invite the Saviour into the poor sinner's cell.

No outward help was to be hoped, he must evoke it all out of himself.

He would venture to implore the Lord Jesus until He came, using his childish memories, the remains of his school learning, the fragments of his reading, and, above all, his mother's Bible stories.
And now the condemned man began to write a book in so far as it was possible to him.

At first his dreams and thoughts and figures were disconnected through timidity, and the painful excitement which often made his pulses gallop and his heart stop beating.

Then he cowered in the corner, and wept and groaned and struggled in vain with the desire for mortal life.