" she ventured; "if you will----"

Her voice was checked suddenly by a sound which rose out of the farther
end of the corridor and made her start and clutch her father's arm. Joe
pressed his face against the bars and looked along at his fellow
prisoner, who was dragging his tin cup over the bars of his cell door
with rapid strokes.

When the thief saw that he had drawn the attention of the visitors, he
thrust his arm out and beckoned to the colonel. "Mister, I want to ask
you to do me a little turn of a favor," he begged in a voice new to Joe,
so full of anguish, so tremulous and weak. "I want you to carry out to
the world and put in the papers the last message of a dyin' man!"

"What's the matter with you, you poor wretch?" asked the colonel, moved
to pity.

"Don't pay any attention to him," advised Joe; "he's only acting up.
He's as strong as I am. I think he wants to beg from you."

The colonel turned away from him to resume his conference with Joe, and
the horse-thief once more rattled his cup across the bars.

"That noise is very annoying," said the colonel, turning to the man
tartly. "Stop it now, before I call the sheriff!"

"Friend, it's a starvin' man that's appealin' to you," said the
prisoner, "it's a man that ain't had a full meal in three weeks. Ask
that gentleman what we git here, let him tell you what this here sheriff
that's up for election agin serves to us poor fellers. Corn dodger for
breakfast, so cold you could keep fish on it, and as hard as the rocks
in this wall! That's what we git, and that's all we git. Ask your
friend."

"Is he telling the truth?" asked the colonel, looking curiously at Joe.

"I'm afraid he is, colonel, sir."

"I'll talk to him," said the colonel.

In a moment he was listening to the horse-thief's earnest relation of
the hardships which he had suffered in the Shelbyville jail, and Joe and
Alice were standing face to face, with less than a yard's space between
them, but a barrier there as insuperable as an alp.

He wanted to say something to cause her to speak again, for her low
voice was as wonderful to him as the sound of some strange instrument
moved to unexpected music by a touch in the dark. He saw her looking
down the corridor, and swiftly around her, as if afraid of what lay in
the shadows of the cells, afraid of the memories of old crimes which
they held, and the lingering recollection of the men they had
contained.

"He'll not do any harm, don't be afra