“Oh, it’s you!” said the prisoner, setting down the stone and letting himself sink back. “I was dreaming, I suppose, and thought there was danger.”
He laid his feverish cheek upon his hand, and seemed to fall asleep at once, his eyes closing and his breath coming easily.
“Trusts me,” muttered Bart. “Poor lad! it ar’n’t his fault. Man can’t kill one as trusts him like that. I shall have to fight for him, I suppose. Always my way—always my way.”
He seated himself at the foot of the couch with his features distorted as if by pain, and for hour after hour watched the sleeper, telling himself that he could not do him harm, though all the time a jealous hatred approaching fury was burning in his breast.
Chapter Twenty Four.
The Prison Life.
“Not dying, Bart?”
“No, not exactly dying,” said that worthy in a low growl; “but s’pose you shoots at and wings a gull, picks it up, and takes it, and puts it in a cage; the wound heals up, and the bird seems sound; but after a time it don’t peck, and don’t preen its plumes, and if it don’t beat itself again’ the bars o’ the cage, it sits and looks at the sea.”