And as an extraordinary, a marvelous resolution simmered and finally crystallized, he chortled.
“What’ll the boys say? What’ll the parson think? What’ll I think? What would that good old mother of mine think, if she was alive? But she died afore she knowed what a good for nothin’ man her boy turned out to be. God rest her soul!” he added softly, “she must have prayed over me a good many hundred times; if she’s kept track of me all these years, this is an answer to her prayers.”
Budge Isham was the partner of Wade, and shared his cabin with him. He slept across the room, and noticed how his friend tossed and muttered in his sleep.
“Great Gee!” he exclaimed, “but Wade’s got it pretty bad; I wonder if it’s the jim jams that is getting hold of him; I’ll sleep with one eye open, for he will need looking after. What a blessed thing it is that he has only one more day. Then he can celebrate and be happy. I have no doubt that by the end of another week, he will have brought things up to their old average.”
And with this conclusion, the man who a few years before took the first honors at Yale, shifted his position, so as to keep an eye on his comrade, and straightway proceeded to drop into a sound slumber, which was not broken until the sun rose on the following morning.
The sympathy for Wade was general. Had he not insisted upon carrying out in spirit and letter the full punishment pronounced upon him, there would have 62 been a unanimous agreement to commute his term by one or two days at least; but all knew the grit or “sand” of the fellow too well to propose it.
His actions on the seventh day caused considerable disquietude. He had labored in the mines, in a desultory fashion up to that time, but he did not do a stroke of work during the concluding hours of his ordeal. It was observed by his partner, Budge Isham, that his appetite was unusually good and he seemed to be in high spirits. His friends attributed this to the closeness of his reward for his abstention, but he took several walks up the mountain side and was gone for a good while. He wore a smiling face and Vose Adams declared that he overheard him communing with himself, when he thought he was too far off for the act to be noticed.
“No use of talkin’,” whispered Vose; “Wade ain’t quite himself; he’s a little off and won’t be exactly right till after two or three days.”
“He has my sympathy,” remarked the parson, “but it will serve as a lesson which he will always remember.”