Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one of these poor fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow’s hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out through the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the valley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache and longing, through that crack.

He could see the lights shine there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and come out — his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though he could not make out at that distance. In the course of years he noted festivities there, and tried to