“Yes,” said the officer, “we do the best we can for 'em.”
The visitors made a murmur of approbation. Their steps moved away; Lemuel heard the guide saying, “Dunno what that fellow's in for. Find out in the captain's room.”
“He didn't look like a very abandoned ruffian,” said one of the visitors, with both pity and amusement in his voice.
VI.
Lemuel stood and leaned his head against the wall of his cell. The tears that had come to his relief in the morning when he found that he was robbed would not come now. He was trembling with famine and weakness, but he could not lie down; it would be like accepting his fate, and every fibre of his body joined his soul in rebellion against that. The hunger gnawed him incessantly, mixed with an awful sickness.
After a long time a policeman passed his door with another prisoner, a drunken woman, whom he locked into a cell at the end of the corridor. When he came back, Lemuel could endure it no longer. “Say!” he called huskily through his door. “Won't you give me a cup of that coffee upstairs? I haven't had anything but an apple to eat for nearly two days. I don't want you to give me the coffee. You can take my clasp button——”
The officer went by a few steps, then he came back, and peered in through the door at Lemuel's face. “Oh! that's you?” he said: he was the officer who had arrested Lemuel.
“Yes. Please get me the coffee. I'm afraid I shall have a fit of sickness if I go much longer.”
“Well,” said the officer, “I guess I can get you something.” He went away, and came back, after Lemuel had given up the hope of his return, with a saucerless cup of coffee, and a slice of buttered bread laid on the top of it. He passed it in through the opening at the bottom of the door.