Sir David Suchet

When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again and saw him re-furling the flag he had shown while the train went by.

I repeated my inquiry.

After a pause,

during which he seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level some two or three hundred yards distant.

I called down to him.

All right.

And made for that point.

There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough, zigzag, descending path, notched out, which I followed.

The cutting was extremely deep and unusually precipitate.

It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down.

To these reasons I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path.

When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear.

He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast.

His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.

I resumed my downward way and, stepping out upon the level of the railroad and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow man with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.

His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw.

On either side, a dripping wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky.

The perspective, one way only, a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon.

the shorter perspective in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air.

So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot that it had an earthy, deadly smell.