"Wait—wait—wait—please listen just a minute—I'm not a criminal—don't put me in—my parents don't know where I am—let me stay out here—my father is rich—he will send for me—he will pay you—he will come for me—please don't put me in that place—I——"
"Say, Kid—you're the limit! For the last time—are you goin' to get in there? If you don't—we'll throw you in."
"I won't!—I can't!—I'll smother in there. I'll die there and my mother will never know—oh—oh—you're choking me—stop—you're chok—cho—ch——"
For a scant minute there came the panting hiss of labored breaths, heaved through clinched teeth; a combat of footsteps, mingled with the sound of ripping garments. Then came a dull thud overhead, a slight rumble, the click of a cell door, followed by an agonizing groan, ending with the pang of a sob that impinged cruelly upon the awesome, dead solitude.
While these hateful sounds still lingered hurtfully in Lem's ears, two feet and a pair of striped legs confronted him. He looked up from his position on the floor. It was Last Time.
"Ain't you asleep yet, Lutts?" he whispered, then went on, "Did you hear them slam that first-timer in? He's right over you in 520. God, but he hated to go in there—but he went in. He's no mongrel—he's a swell looker—only a kid—the poor devil. It's eleven o'clock—there's the bull lookin' now—night."
The convict stepped into his cell and slammed his door noisily as a signal to notify the guard, who stood waiting at the end of the tier, that he had closed the door tight. Then the big lever ground back into position, and Lem sat motionless with a horde of curious thoughts trailing across his benumbed brain. It seemed like an age that he sat there, throughout the pitiless hours like a distorted image; the deserted habitat of a soul with its tenant gone. He was only aroused momentarily when hour after hour "Creeping Jesus" hung at his door for an instant, like a great nocturnal humming-bird, then darted away like a winged phantom.
The boy had the comforting, though fatuous notion, that the nearer to the door he managed to get, the nearer to freedom was he. Under an apathetic spell his thoughts fled back to the hills. With quick, wistful breaths, each a cry from a stifling soul, and his hot forehead pressed against the iron, he crouched there on the floor by the cell door. His body was imprisoned between these grim, impassable walls; but his soul was yet uncaged. For in spirit he was once again back amidst the beauteous wild hills of the Cumberland with the feel of his rifle, hunting and hunted in turn, but with the pungent aroma of odoriferous blossoms in his nostrils; the purl of crystal waters in his ears; and the illimitable arch of opalescent sky over him, and the free fraternal rocks beneath his feet.
And in his vision, framed in blissful hours, his retrospection conjured a seraphic face—a luring, misty vision, with a bowed red spot for a mouth, and great black-fringed eyes—eyes tinted like robins' eggs—eyes that held an unworldly baby look; and curls—a riotous billow of satiny curls. Ah, even as he crouched here, he could see the little pale scar that crossed the part in her curls—his scar—his scar to kiss,—that little scarab-like mark that fascinated his lips.
The longer he stared at the rufus halo that encircled the gas light, the wider it expanded; and as it grew, its burning gamut embraced a multiplicity of changing scenes representing hours of his life. Like cinematographic pictures, it held a stirring pantomime boldly up to his intent gaze.