When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself,
'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took her
down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with
revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets--evidently some official
or cantonal magazine--and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon,
the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of
cruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard
with a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow.
'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face
at the same time reddened with indignation.
'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if
monsters were cruel.'
And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a
new-born smile.
'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she.
'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but--'
'That was good of them,' says she.
'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.
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