CHAPTER XIIThe scorpion meditation cell was monastic in its simplicity. It contained no furniture and the occupant sat—if he sat at all—upon a stone bench projecting from the wall. He paced—and he usually did pace—across a twelve-foot expanse of weathered stone.
There was one window, very high up in the wall. Beyond it stretched a gray patch of sky. There were no weaving boughs beyond the window, only another gray wall a hundred feet away and splotches of sunlight on that wall.
No snatches of bird-song came from beyond the window, no voices raised in gaiety or made somber by sorrow.
But it was not the silence which made Jim Lawrence bow his head in torment and beat with his fists upon his chest. It was not the silence—but rage. He had spent less than ten hours in the cell, yet it seemed
