Thereafter silence—a deadly hush with later some murmured prayers here and there. But with Clyde cold and with a kind of shaking ague. He dared not think—let alone cry. So that's how it was. They drew the curtains. And then—and then. He was gone now. Those three dimmings of the lights. Sure, those were the flashes. And after all those nights at prayer. Those moanings! Those beatings of his head! And only a minute ago he had been alive—walking by there. But now dead. And some day he—he!—how could he be sure that he would not? How could he?
He shook and shook, lying on his couch, face down. The keepers came and ran up the curtains—as sure and secure in their lives apparently as though there was no death in the world. And afterwards he could hear them talking—not to him so much—he had proved too reticent thus far—but to some of the others.
Poor Pasquale. This whole business of the death penalty was all wrong. The warden thought so. So did they. He was working to have it abolished.
But that man! His prayers! And now he was gone. His cell over there was empty and another man would be put in it—to go too, later. Some one—many—like Cutrone, like himself—had been in this one—on this pallet. He sat up—moved to the chair. But he—they—had sat on that—too. He stood up—only to sink down on the pallet again. "God! God! God! God!" he now exclaimed to himself—but not aloud—and yet not unlike that other man who had so terrorized him on the night of his arrival here and who was still here. But he would go too. And all of these others—and himself maybe—unless—unless——
He had seen his first man die.
CHAPTER XXXI
In the meantime, however, Asa's condition had remained serious, and it was four entire months before it was possible for him to sit up again or for Mrs. Griffiths to dream of resuming her lecturing scheme. But by that time, public interest in her and her son's fate was considerably reduced. No Denver paper was interested to finance her return for anything she could do for them. And as for the public in the vicinity of the crime, it remembered Mrs. Griffiths and her son most clearly, and in so far as she was concerned, sympathetically—but only, on the other hand, to think of him as one who probably was guilty and in that case, being properly punished for his crime—that it would be as well if an appeal were not taken—or—if it were—that it be refused. These guilty criminals with their interminable appeals!
And with Clyde where he was, more and more executions—although as he found—and to his invariable horror, no one ever became used to such things there; farmhand Mowrer for the slaying of his former employer; officer Riordan for the slaying of his wife—and a fine upstanding officer too but a minute before his death; and afterwards, within the month, the going of the Chinaman, who seemed, for some reason, to endure a long time (and without a word in parting to any one—although it was well known that he spoke a few words of English). And after him Larry Donahue, the overseas soldier—with a grand call—just before the door closed behind: "Good-by, boys. Good luck."
And after him again—but, oh—that was so hard; so much closer to Clyde—so depleting to his strength to think of bearing this deadly life here without—Miller Nicholson—no less. For after five months in which they had been able to walk and talk and call to each other from time to time from their cells—and Nicholson had begun to advise him as to books to read—as well as one important point in connection with his own case—on appeal—or in the event of any second trial, i.e.,—that the admission of Roberta's letters as evidence, as they stood, at least, be desperately fought on the ground that the emotional force of them was detrimental in the case of any jury anywhere, to a calm unbiased consideration of the material facts presented by them—and that instead of the letters being admitted as they stood they should be digested for the facts alone and that digest—and that only offered to the jury. "If your lawyers can get the Court of Appeals to agree to the soundness of that you will win your case sure."
And Clyde at once, after inducing a personal visit on the part of Jephson, laying this suggestion before him and hearing him say that it was sound and that he and Belknap would assuredly incorporate it in their appeal.