As we tumbled past the big door the sunlight burst out from behind a cloud. Charley gave a shout, and crying, “You can’t catch me ’fore I touch the sunshine,” bounded away toward the window. He was well ahead, but I started after him, and almost in the same instant I saw him slip and throw out his arms. He did not trip; he slid exactly as though he had been on the ice, and then fell heavily, face down on the stone floor. There were many exclamations of pity as I rushed to him, crying, “Oh, Charley, darling! are you hurt very badly?”
I stooped over to help him, but instead of rising at once, he turned slowly over and sat for a moment on the floor and said, “What made me slip?” I only repeated, “Are you hurt, dear?” and though his lips quivered piteously, he bravely answered, “No; only some places smart some, that’s all.”
And all the time that I was lifting him to his feet and noting the steady spread of that cruel mark on his face, I was conscious, coldly conscious, that at No. 3’s door I had seen no face, from No. 3’s cell I had heard no voice. Once again Charley lifted up his puzzled eyes to me and said, “What made me slip?” and putting his arm around my waist to steady himself, he raised his right foot, and resting it on his left knee he looked at the sole of his little slipper and it was wet.
I leaned over and passed my forefinger across it to make sure, then without thought drew my finger down my white apron and left a long red smear. The man in the cell nearest us groaned. I gasped, “Blood!” and Charley hid his face in my garments and trembled like a leaf. Holding him tight with my both arms I looked behind me, and there across the gray, stone floor, slow, sluggish and sinister, there crept a narrow, dark-red stream, silent, so stealthily silent, and yet in that instant’s pause I seemed to understand the excitement it would presently create.
A moment we stood a pair of terror-shaken children; then holding Charley in my arms I rushed madly for the corridor door. The turnkey, peacefully reading his paper, heard us coming and said, “Not through already?”
Then as he turned his head his face went white as he finished with, “What is it?”
I laid my hand upon the smear on my white apron and gasped, “Blood!”