as
chased and caught, beaten ferociously about the head on the way to the
prison and after arrival there, and finally I thrown into our den like a
dog.

And in a few seconds he sank down again and grew flighty of speech.
One of our people was at last penetrated with something vaguely akin
to compassion, may be, for he looked out through the gratings at the
guardian officer, pacing to and fro, and said:

"Say, Mickey, this shrimp's goin' to die."

"Stop your noise!" was all the answer he got. But presently our man
tried it again. He drew himself to the gratings, grasping them with his
hands, and looking out through them, sat waiting till the officer was
passing once more, and then said:

"Sweetness, you'd better mind your eye, now, because you beats have
killed this cuss. You've busted his head and he'll pass in his checks
before sun-up. You better go for a doctor, now, you bet you had."

The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club,
that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the
flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half dozen
policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the dungeon.

But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a
conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk had
made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry,
and shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the
bruised man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face,
striped with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant. The doctor
examined the man's broken head also, and presently said:

"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, may be too
late now."

Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him,
and they kept up a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen
minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the
prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the
wounded man, but toward daylight he died.

It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering
reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest,
saddest daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the
sickly yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh
and white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and
believed that the night was go