k down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling,

and thought, “And here in these crawling creatures is the first

condition of the body after death.”

“Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five

paces by four and a half.” The prisoner walked to and fro in his

cell, counting its measurements, and the roar of the city arose like

muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. “He

made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner

counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his

mind with him from that latter repetition. “The ghosts that

vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the

appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the

embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her

golden hair, and she looked like... Let us ride on again, for God’s

sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake!...

He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.... Five paces by

four and a half.” With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from

the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster,

obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city

changed to this extentthat it still rolled in like muffled drums,

but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose

above them.

Charles Dickens ElecBook C