But he could not help looking through the spy-hole to see what the poor fellow would do.

What he saw was the condemned man falling on to the brick floor and lying there motionless.
The gaoler was alarmed, and opened the door again.

So the man was clever enough to die quickly?
That would be a miscarriage! But the culprit moved slightly, and begged to be left alone.
And he was alone, once again in this damp room with the wooden bench, the straw mattress, the water-jug on a table--things which during the long period of probation he had gazed at a hundred times, thinking of nothing but "They must acquit me." Out of the planks that propped up the straw mattress he had put together a kind of table, a work of which the gaoler disapproved, but he had not destroyed it.

High up in the wall was a small barred window, through which mercifully came the reflection from an outer opposite wall, now lighted by the sun.

The edge of a steep gabled roof and a chimney could be just seen through the window, and in between peeped a three-cornered piece of blue sky.
That was the joy of the cell.