It is nothing." Michael's eyes dwelt on the kind face and then closed.

There was that in them which the doctor could not fathom.
He took the food that was pressed on him, and then turned his face to the wall, and made as if he slept.
And the walls bent over him, and whispered to him, "Stay with us.

We are not so cruel as the world outside." And that night the dying convict in the next cell, nearly as close on freedom as Michael, heard all through the night a low sound of strangled anguish that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn.
The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm and wan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately at him..