im."

He paused, and the man thoughtfully observed, "No, I fancy not."

"You go into that jail-house through a stone door, and there's a
rough-lookin' feller settin'--I mean sitting--there in front of another
door made of iron gratin's as thick as crowbars.... The place don't
smell good."

"Isn't it well kept?" inquired McCalloway in some surprise, and the boy
hastily explained.

"I don't mean that it plum stinks. I reckon it's as clean as a jail can
be, but the air is stale--even out on the street that lowland air is
flat.... It don't taste right in a man's throat.... Asa was reared up
here in these free hills. He's like a caged hawk down there."

The soldier nodded sympathetically.

"Did he--seem well?"

"He hasn't sickened none ... but his face used to be right colourful....
Now it's pale ... and sort of gray-like.... Of course a turnkey went
along with us, and we didn't talk with him by himself.... I reckon he
didn't say none of the things he craved most to say.... He was right
silent-like."

The boy broke off, and for a while the two sat in silence. When Boone
took up the thread of his narrative again, there was something like a
catch in his throat.

"They were pretty polite to us there.... They showed us all over the
place ... they even took us to the death row.... There was a nigger in
there that was goin' ter be hung next morning at daybreak.... I reckon
he's dead now.... A feller kept walkin' back and forth in front of that
cell ... and an electric light was burnin' there full bright.... That
nigger, neither night ner day ... could ever git away from that
light.... They were afraid he might seek ter kill hisself.... He come
ter the bars an' said, 'Howdy, white folks,' ... an' then he went back
an' sat down on the ledge that he sleeps on."

The recital, painfully punctuated with its frequent pauses, halted
there. It was a matter of several minutes before it began again. Now the
voice was laboured, as if the speaker were panting for breath, and the
careful pronunciation relapsed wildly into the older and ruder forms of
solecism.

"They tuck us out an' ... showed us the cement yard ... whar the gallows
stood.... It was painted a sort of brownish red.... It put me in mind of
dried blood. The nigger could hear the hammers whilest they set the
thing up.... Asa could hear 'em too.... Asa hed done seed ther scaffold
hisself ... through the winder-bars when ... he exercised ... in the
corrider.... But whe