Sheilah Mcleod by Guy Boothby

I am not going to attempt to furnish you with a description of my sensations during the first fortnight of my imprisonment. It would be quite impossible to give you any adequate idea of them. I believe for the greater part of the time I was on the verge of madness, one moment buoyed up with hope that Pete, seeing his own inevitable doom approaching, would make confession of my innocence, and the next hurled down into the depths lest he should not do it at all, and so leave me, an innocent man, to suffer undeserved punishment for the remainder of my natural existence. The day of his execution was drawing closer, and with every moment my anxiety was growing more and more unbearable. As if to make it harder, by the rules of the prison I could not appeal to him in any way. Of Sheilah I dared not think at all, and by the same token I could only speculate what had happened to my father.

One morning, however, I was destined to be enlightened on two of these subjects. The Governor, going his rounds, stopped at my cell, and when I saw him I dropped the work upon which I had been engaged and stood at attention.