“That tall fellow yonder,” replied the keeper, “with the straight nose, and high forehead—that’s he—see? reefing off flax yonder.”
“Don’t say,” said the man, with his bloated eyes gloating over Percy. “How old is he?”
“Nineteen only,” said the keeper.
“Humph!” said the man, loud enough for Percy to hear—“Pre—co—cious; wasn’t intended for that sort of work, I fancy, by the look of his hands; they are as small and white as a woman’s. Ask him some question, can’t ye? I wish I was keeper here; I’d like to break his spirit,” said Mr. Scraggs, as Percy answered the keeper’s question without raising his eyes. “Bah! how these fuzzy bits of lint and flax fly about the room; my throat and nose are full. I should think this would kill a fellow off before long.”
“It does,” said the keeper, coolly.
“And what’s that horrible smell? Faugh—it makes me sick.”
“That? Oh, that’s the oil used in the machinery.”
“Why the fury don’t you ventilate, then?” asked Mr. Scraggs, thinking more of his own lungs than the prisoners’, adding, with a laugh, as he recollected himself, “I don’t suppose the Governor of your State is particular on that p’int;” then, with another stare at Percy, he said, “they say he seduced old Ford’s daughter before he stole the money.”
The words had hardly left his lips, when, with a bound like a panther, Percy instantly felled him to the earth, the blood spouting from his own mouth and nostrils with the violence of his passion.
Scraggs lay for some hours insensible, though not dangerously wounded, and Percy was led off in irons, to reflect on this new misery in solitary confinement.