ed that man must cut off
his own right hand. And there, like a devil, at his left lay the
weapon that was to tempt him.

Nothing so inhuman, so barbarous, so fiendish, so hellish, had Jason
yet seen, and with a cry like the growl of an untamed beast, he broke
from his warders, took the nail in his fingers like a vice, tore it
up out of the bleeding hand, and set Michael Sunlocks free.

At the next instant his wrath was gone, and he had fallen back to his
listless mood. Then the warders hurried up, laid hold of both men,
and hustled them away with a brave show of strength and courage to
the office of the Captain.

Jorgen Jorgensen himself was there, and it was he who had ordered the
ruthless punishment. The warders told their tale, and he listened to
them with a grin on his cruel face.

"Strap them up together," he cried, "leg to leg and arm to arm."

And when this was done he said, bitterly--

"So you two men are fond of one another's company! Well, you shall
have enough of it and to spare. Day after day, week after week, month
after month, like as you are now, you shall live together, until you
abhor and detest and loathe the sight of each other. Now go!"

CHAPTER III.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back
to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their
punishment meant to them--that in every hour of life henceforward, in
every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human
carcase by his side. The barbarity of their doom was hideous; but
strangely different were the ways they accepted it. Michael Sunlocks
was aflame with indignation; Jason was crushed with shame. The
upturned face of Sunlocks was pale, his flaxen hair was dishevelled,
his bloodshot eyes were afire. But Jason's eyes, full of confusion,
were bent on the ground, his tanned face trembled visibly, and his
red hair, grown long as of old, fell over his drooping shoulders like
a mantle of blood.

And as they trudged along, side by side, in the first hours of their
unnatural partnership, Sunlocks struggled hard to keep his eyes from
the man with whom he was condemned to live and die, lest the gorge of
his very soul should rise at the sight of him. So he never once
looked at Jason through many hours of that day. And Jason, on his
part, laboring with the thought that it was he who by his rash act
had brought both of them to this sore pass, never