White foam flecks his blue lips, and great beads of agony start to his brow. Hurrying to his side, Henderson tenderly wipes the pain-distorted forehead, and offers him drink. His teeth are fast clenched. He makes a rude attempt to drive the comforter from him. Obeying the motion, Henderson seats himself and awaits the issue.
By and by the convulsive gasping ceases. Again he bends over the sufferer. How strangely quiet the man is! No motion, no sound—not even a breath! Heaven help him! he has gone at last!
How dismal will the long night be locked in here alone with a corpse! Death sits horribly on these evil features. Upon the hard, set face, one may still trace the footprints of unholy and unbridled desire. The mouth is much drawn. Its strong white teeth show grimly between the blue parted lips, and, to the watcher's nervous fancy, they seem, even in death, to snarl viciously at the beholder. Livid circles underline the sunken eyes, now wide and glassy, beneath their heavy brows, and, as Henderson morbidly conceives, turned wrathfully upon him. If he could but close those terrible eyes! Alas! he dare not with his shaky hand attempt so bold a thing! A moment ago he could have turned his back upon the ugly sight; now it is too late. By some hypnotic fascination beyond his control, his gaze is riveted to the corpse.
The slow hours wear on. The living and the dead, set face to face, grimly confront each other. The dead man never winces. The living man, at last, succumbs to the stress and horror of the situation. The walls of the apartment reel and totter. The corpse dims and fades before him, and he falls limp and unconscious to the floor.
Sensation gradually returning to the overwrought watcher, he finds himself still miserably faint and weak. It is, however, something to have escaped the spell of those death-glazed eyes, and, thanking God, he strives to get upon his feet. In his effort to rise, he stumbles clumsily over a small dark object upon the floor, close beside the bed. Regaining his poise, he discerns that it is the coarse, heavy shoe of a convict. He lifts it, thinking to place it beside its fellow beneath the cot. His hand is weak and nerveless. It escapes his grasp, and falls clattering to the floor. As it strikes, his ear is surprised by the click of some metallic substance. A small shining implement lies at his feet. He picks it up. It is a miniature steel saw, and must somehow have been concealed in this shoe of the dead man. Curiously examining it and the shoe, he discovers (what in the dim light had at first eluded his notice) a displaced inner sole, thin, but firm and nicely fitted. Removing it, he sees that the shoe is still intact, and that this neatly adjusted super-sole was but an ingenious blind, adroitly concealing the precious implement, which, had fate proved less unkind, should have opened to the dead prisoner the long untrodden way of liberty.
It is not in Robert Henderson's nature to peach on a comrade, living or dead, and, carefully restoring the saw to its hiding-place, he readjusts the sham sole, and, with a touch of that reverence which one instinctively yields to the belongings of the dead, puts the shoe aside.
Still weak and trembling, but no longer magnetically drawn to the corpse, he totters to the grated window, which, to eke out the sick man's failing breath, has been left open. Dropping upon the rude stool beside it, he leans his yet dizzy head upon the sill. A wandering breath of the summer night steals gently in. How balmy it is, this tender night wind! And he, a worn creature at a prison grating, might be a gentle lady at her lattice, so softly it caresses his wasted cheek!
Yet, kindly as it is, it does not wholly restore his wonted vigour. At intervals, a deathly faintness oppresses him. A fearful sinking of heart and limb, as if life and courage were, together, oozing away. What if the end were indeed come, and he were to die to-night, unattended and alone; his filmy eyes looking their last upon earth, still confronted by that odious dead face, that, even in the world beyond, may still pursue him, as, for years, another dead face has!