"That's what I mean by instinct."
Teddy resumed as if he hadn't heard. "When I wake up in the night—and waking up in the night in that place, with snores and groans and guys talking in their sleep and having nightmares, is some stunt, believe me—but when I do, it's just as if I had great big arms round me, and some one was saying: 'All right, Teddy, I'm holding you. Keep a stiff upper lip. I'll make it as easy as I can for you and everyone else. I'm just drawing you—drawing you—drawing you—a wee little bit at a time—over here, where you'll get your big chance.' What's more, Bob," he went on, as if he touched on the heart of his interest, "it says it'll take care of Flynn and his wife and his poor little kiddies, and do the things—" Once more he broke off with his uneasy laugh. "Ah, what's the use? You think I'm a quitter, don't you?"
"Why should I think that?"
"Oh, I don't know. I talk like a quitter. But it isn't that. If I could still do anything for ma and the girls—"
"I'm looking after them, old boy."
"So there you are. What'd be the good of my staying?" He added, between clenched teeth, "God, how I'd hate to go back!"
"Back into the world?"
He spoke as if to himself: "You see—that day—the day the thing happened—and they came and caught me—and did all those things to me—and I saw Flynn lying by the road—it was—it was a kind of sickener. If putting me out of the way is the thing in the wind, it was done right there and then. Right there and then I seem to have begun—moving on." He drew a long breath. "And I'd rather keep moving, Bob—no matter to where—no matter to what—than turn back again to face a bunch of men."
[CHAPTER XXVII]
Teddy was not called on to face a bunch of men till going to the courtroom for his trial. Dressed long before the hour in a new dark-blue suit, fresh linen, and a dark-blue tie, his prison pallor, a little like that of death, put him out of the list of the active and free. As he sat on the edge of his bunk, somber with dread, he was nevertheless obliged to find suitable jocosities with which to answer the good-luck wishes that came slithering along the walls from the neighboring cells. It was half past nine before two guards whom he had never seen before, stalwart fellows well over six feet, came to the door and unlocked it.