as also growing much
paler, except for a red flush on the cheek bones. Mr. Austin became
alarmed, but Ned obstinately refused any help, always asserting with
emphasis that he had no ailment of any kind. But the man could see that
he had become much lighter, and he wondered at the boy's physical
failure. De Zavala, also, expressed his sorrow in sonorous Spanish, but
Ned, while thanking them, steadily disclaimed any need of sympathy.

The boy found the days hard, but the nights were harder. For the first
time in his life he could not sleep well. He would lie for hours so wide
awake that his eyes grew used to the dark, and he could see everything
in his room. He was troubled, too, by bad dreams and in many of these
dreams he was a living skeleton, wandering about and condemned to live
forever without food. More than once he bitterly regretted the
resolution he had taken, but having taken it, he would never alter it.
His silent, concentrated nature would not let him. Yet he endured
undoubted torture day by day. Torture was the only name for it.

"I shall send an application to President Santa Anna to have you allowed
a measure of liberty," said Mr. Austin finally. "You are simply pining
away here, Edward, my lad. You cannot eat, that is, you eat only a
little. I have passed the most tempting and delicate things to you and
you always refuse. No boy of your age would do so unless something were
very much wrong with his physical system. You have lost many pounds, and
if this keeps on I do not know what will happen to you. I shall not ask
for more liberty for you, but you must have a doctor at once."

"I do not want any doctor, Uncle Steve," said the boy. "He cannot do me
any good, but there is somebody else whom I want."

"Who is he?"

"A barber."

"A barber! Now what good can a barber do you?"

"A great deal. What I crave most in the world is a hair-cut, and only a
barber can do that for me. My hair has been growing for more than three
months, Uncle Steve, and you've seen how extremely thick it is. Now it
is so long, too, that it's falling all about my eyes. Its weight is
oppressing my brain. I feel a little touch of fever now and then, and I
believe it's this awful hair."

He ran his fingers through the heavy locks until his head seemed to be
surrounded with a defense like the quills of a porcupine. Beneath the
great bush of hair his gray eyes glowed in a pale, thin face.

"There is a lot of it," said Mr. Austin, s