Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/129

 His heart had shrunk from it, crying out within him to speak, to give the lie to this man, to plead wildly for himself. It was not the physical pain he feared; it was the degradation, the utter ignominy, the black horror of a disgrace greater, it seemed, than he could bear; it was not his bare, naked flesh that would quiver and writhe from the curling lash, it was his bare, naked soul. And he had said no word. He could not demean himself by a defence that he had no hope would be believed and, worst of all, would but add to the malignant satisfaction of Wenger, who would see in it a whine for mercy.

And then Warden Rand had spoken:

"Two days in solitary confinement."

No lash! He could have sobbed with relief. He had been given leniency. Why? He had not known then—he did not know now. He had thought of it through those hours of horrible, dead, silent blackness, and no answer had come. He had escaped what few, if any, had ever escaped before for the same act.

It had not been so bad at first in that cell. It was afternoon when he went in, and the six little round ventilating holes in the bottom of the door threw tiny shafts of light across the floor. In the beginning he had not given them any thought; then they had absorbed his whole attention, and he had watched them with strained eyes, as though to rivet the yellow flickering threads and hold them in their places on the floor. They had grown shorter and shorter, receded to dull grey circles on the door that were like three pairs of glazed eyes mocking at him as the light gradually died in their depths. Then there was blackness in which he could