The convict, whose ghastly pallor, glassy eyes, and gleaming teeth sat
like a mask of death upon his face, staggered to his feet.

"You have done it at last! you have broken my spirit. A human word has
done what the dungeon and the whip could not do.... It twists inside of
me now.... I could be your slave for that human word." Tears streamed
from his eyes. "I can't help crying. I'm only a baby, after all--and I
thought I was a man."

He reeled, and the warden caught him and seated him in the chair. He
took the convict's hand in his and felt a firm, true pressure there.
The convict's eyes rolled vacantly. A spasm of pain caused him to raise
his free hand to his chest; his thin, gnarled fingers--made shapeless
by long use in the slit of the dungeon-door--clutched automatically at
his shirt. A faint, hard smile wrinkled his wan face, displaying the
gleaming teeth more freely.

"That human word," he whispered,--"if you had spoken it long
ago,--if--but it's all--it's all right--now. I'll go--I'll go to
work--to-morrow."

There was a slightly firmer pressure of the hand that held the
warden's; then it relaxed. The fingers which clutched the shirt slipped
away, and the hand dropped to his side. The weary head sank back and
rested on the chair; the strange, hard smile still sat upon the marble
face, and a dead man's glassy eyes and gleaming teeth were upturned
towards the ceiling.

A Game of Honor

Four of the five men who sat around the card-table in the cabin of the
"Merry Witch" regarded the fifth man with a steady, implacable look of
scorn. The solitary one could not face that terrible glance. His head
drooped, and his gaze rested upon some cards which he idly fumbled as
he waited, numbed and listless, to hear his sentence.

The more masterful one of the four made a disdainful gesture towards
the craven one, and thus addressed the others:

"Gentlemen, none of us can have forgotten the terms of our compact. It
was agreed at the beginning of this expedition that only men of
unflinching integrity should be permitted to participate in its known
dangers and possible rewards. To find and secure the magnificent
treasure which we are seeking with a sure prospect of discovering it,
we must run the risk of encounters with savage Mexican soldiers and
marines, and take all the other dangerous chances of which you are
aware. As the charterer of this vessel and the leader of the expedition
I have exercised extraordi