For a moment he pauses in his hurried whisper. The soft eyes are full of sympathy, the lips smile encouragingly. He leans the broom against the door, glances quickly around, hesitates an instant, and then deftly slips a slender, delicate hand between the bars, and gives my cheek a tender pat.
Involuntarily I step back, with the instinctive dislike of a man's caress. Yet I would not offend my kind friend. But Wingie must have noticed my annoyance: he eyes me critically, wonderingly. Presently picking up the broom, he says with a touch of diffidence:
"You are all right, Aleck. I like you for 't. Jest wanted t' try you, see?"
"How 'try me,' Wingie?"
"Oh, you ain't next? Well, you see—" he hesitates, a faint flush stealing over his prison pallor, "you see, Aleck, it's—oh, wait till I pipe th' screw."
Poor Wingie, the ruse is too transparent to hide his embarrassment. I can distinctly follow the step of the Block Captain on the upper galleries. He is the sole officer in the cell-house during church service. The unlocking of the yard door would apprise us of the entrance of a guard, before the latter could observe Wingie at my cell.
I ponder over the flimsy excuse. Why did Wingie leave me? His flushed face, the halting speech of the usually loquacious rangeman, the subterfuge employed to "sneak off,"—as he himself would characterize his hasty departure,—all seem very peculiar. What could he have meant by "trying" me? But before I have time to evolve a satisfactory explanation, I hear Wingie tiptoeing back.
"It's all right, Aleck. They won't come from the chapel for a good while yet."
"What did you mean by 'trying' me, Wingie?"
"Oh, well," he stammers, "never min', Aleck. You are a good boy, all right. You don't belong here, that's what I say."