Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/125

 persecution, that enmity had grown. "I'll break you and I'll make you crawl"—the very repetition of the words in Varge's mind brought now a curious whitening of his lips. No day had passed—except those two, that forty-eight hours in the blackness—that Wenger had not said those words, no change, the same words, that phrase, "I'll break you and I'll make you crawl," thrown at him casually across the bench, spoken unexpectedly in his ear, but always spoken, never a day without that taunt—a taunt that had brought Wenger more than once very near to death, so near that even now Varge shut his eyes and fought with his beating brain.

Wenger—yes; there was cause for the unrest there—and not alone on account of the other's treatment of himself. Other guards were strict, perhaps harsh, but they were human; this man was a bully of the lowest type who gloried in his malicious tyranny, suave and sleek to his superiors—not a convict in his charge, save one or two of his favourites who fawned upon him, but would have torn him limb from limb if they dared—and some of them dared, given but a shadow of a chance—Twisty Connors, for instance, and the Butcher and their pals.

They had even broached it to him—and hinted darkly at other things as well—sounding him, testing him, trying him out, after Twisty, with the natural superstition of his illiterate kind to whom luck was the only deity at whose shrine homage was ever paid, had taken the initiative. Seven-seven-seven—lucky seven! "Mabbe there's something I'll let youse in on one of these days," Twisty had said. It had a strange ironic effect. He had felt himself gradually being cultivated