"Are you afraid to do it?" asked the warden.
A momentary light flashed in the convict's eyes.
"No!" he gasped; "you know I am not. But I can't—not yet—not yet."
The convict, whose ghastly pallor, glassy eyes, and gleaming teeth sat like a mask of death upon his face, staggered to his feet.
"You have done it at last! you have broken my spirit. A human word has done what the dungeon and the whip could not do.... It twists inside of me now.... I could be your slave for that human word." Tears streamed from his eyes. "I can't help crying. I'm only a baby, after all—and I thought I was a man."
He reeled, and the warden caught him and seated him in the chair. He took the convict's hand in his and felt a firm, true pressure there. The convict's eyes rolled vacantly. A spasm of pain caused him to raise his free hand to his chest; his thin, gnarled fingers—made shapeless by long use in the slit of the dungeon door—clutched automatically at his shirt. A faint, hard smile wrinkled his wan face, displaying the gleaming teeth more freely.
"That human word," he whispered—"if you had spoken it long ago, if—but it's all—it's all right—now. I'll go—I'll go to work—to-morrow."
There was a slightly firmer pressure of the hand that held the warden's; then it relaxed. The fingers which clutched the shirt slipped away, and the hand dropped to his side. The weary head sank back and rested on the chair; the strange, hard smile still sat upon the marble face, and a dead man's glassy eyes and gleaming teeth were upturned toward the ceiling.