Nate looked at him dully.
"Yes, indeed, I'll do anything for him, anything you say. Won't they let me sit by him, don't you think?"
The man of law looked into the other's face amazedly. Didn't he understand yet? he wondered.
"You can't do anything now," he said. "Just come along wi' me. Don't you know what you've done, man alive?"
Nate looked at him an instant and staggered where he stood.
"Go on," he said thickly, after that one instant's horrified perception. "I'm ready," and he spoke no more.
The marshal hustled him quickly through the crowd and down the street, to the little building known as the lock-up. It was the place to which he had meant to consign Hapgood a bit ago. The crowd buzzing after like flies around a dead horse, surged up to the door and leaned against it, outside. It was a small square building, scarcely larger than a smoke-house, with two tiny barred windows up under its roof, and one thick door, clamped with iron, in front. It was built of stone laid in cement up to within three feet of the eaves, and finished out with timber. There was no way of heating it, and it held absolutely no movable furniture. A bunk projected two feet from one of the cemented walls, eighteen inches above the stone floor, bare planks, without mattress or blanket. That was all. A cage, indeed, as Nate had called it in his anger of a short time since, which had so completely vanished now. But he little cared for its bareness in that misery of the soul which so far transcends bodily suffering.
"I'll bring you in a blanket and a comfortable of my wife's to make up your bed, and a basin and pitcher of water. I don't want to be hard on an old chum. I'll fix you up real snug while you stay, and you just try and settle down to make the best of it. You can't gather up spilled milk, Nate, nor spilled blood, neither. Now I'm going, but I'll come back pretty soon, and don't worry."
Nate still did not answer, nor move. But as the door closed heavily his lips parted.
"Dead! Dead! No, no, NO!" and a strong shudder took possession of him, as uncontrollable as an ague fit.