I thought of the lightning and the knife, and truly I was sick, but I could not speak; I only slipped my hand through one of the openings in the door and clung silently to a bar. Charley turned and looked at me, and said in his important, little way: “I dess she’s got the aches in her head ag’in! But please, Mr. No. 3, what’s a-goin’ to be the matter wiv you, if you are goin’ to die?”
And then No. 3 laughed a laugh that made me cold, and said, “Well, your father and some of his friends think I am going to die of a throat trouble, but I’ll bet five dollars they are mistaken!” and then again he spoke quietly to me: “What is it, child; why are you so pale?”
He gently took my little hand in his. I gave a scream and tore it so roughly from him that it was badly cut in passing the bars. I raised my face--and I suppose some of my loathing fear and horror must have been written there, for never shall I forget that next moment! He was looking down straight into my eyes, when suddenly his own flared wide open, then as quickly narrowing to the merest, glittering slit, he gave the most awful oath I ever heard, and angrily muttered: “They have told her! She knows all, this little child! Oh, how could they do it! How could they do it! What cruel beasts men are!” And then rang through the building one great, appalling cry, like that of some wild beast in pain and rage. At that cry all was wild commotion. The turnkey struck out one peal from the alarm bell, and was tearing open the great lock of the main door. No. 3 suddenly clenched his soft, white hand and drove it with all his force against the iron bars. The blood seemed to leap from his gashed wrist and hand and fall in streams down into his sleeve. He seized the bars of his door and shook them as another man might have shaken a wooden lattice. The turnkey was at the cell; was in; there was a scuffle of feet. The heavy, wordless breathing of desperate men, two clear, cold-sounding clicks, and No. 3, with white, drawn face, lifted his manacled hands high above his head to strike a killing blow, stopped suddenly, and pitched forward on his cot, face downward, and as the turnkey hurried us out of the corridor I heard that dreadful sound that wrings with pain all there is of womanhood in any female thing, whether she be seventy or seven years old--the sound of a strong man’s sobs.