ome, Tierney."

Nate looked at him dully.

"Yes, indeed, I'll do anything for him, anything you say. Won't they let
me sit by him, don't you think?"

The man of law looked into the other's face amazedly. Didn't he
understand yet? he wondered.

"You can't do anything now," he said. "Just come along wi' me. Don't you
know what you've done, man alive?"

Nate looked at him an instant and staggered where he stood.

"Go on," he said thickly, after that one instant's horrified perception.
"I'm ready," and he spoke no more.

The marshal hustled him quickly through the crowd and down the street,
to the little building known as the lock-up. It was the place to which
he had meant to consign Hapgood a bit ago. The crowd buzzing after like
flies around a dead horse, surged up to the door and leaned against it,
outside. It was a small square building, scarcely larger than a
smoke-house, with two tiny barred windows up under its roof, and one
thick door, clamped with iron, in front. It was built of stone laid in
cement up to within three feet of the eaves, and finished out with
timber. There was no way of heating it, and it held absolutely no
movable furniture. A bunk projected two feet from one of the cemented
walls, eighteen inches above the stone floor, bare planks, without
mattress or blanket. That was all. A cage, indeed, as Nate had called it
in his anger of a short time since, which had so completely vanished
now. But he little cared for its bareness in that misery of the soul
which so far transcends bodily suffering.

"I'll bring you in a blanket and a comfortable of my wife's to make up
your bed, and a basin and pitcher of water. I don't want to be hard on
an old chum. I'll fix you up real snug while you stay, and you just try
and settle down to make the best of it. You can't gather up spilled
milk, Nate, nor spilled blood, neither. Now I'm going, but I'll come
back pretty soon, and don't worry."

Nate still did not answer, nor move. But as the door closed heavily his
lips parted.

"Dead! Dead! No, _no_, NO!" and a strong shudder took possession
of him, as uncontrollable as an ague fit.

When the marshal returned, a few moments later, with the comforts he had
promised, Nate still sat there, gray, haggard, and speechless. The
kind-hearted jailer looked askance at him, and hesitated to ask him to
rise that he might arrange the bunk. When he did proffer the request
Nate stared at him a moment, as if unhearing, then