Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/130

 not see his hand before his face, and the sense of a heavy, crushing weight, growing more and more intolerable, that settled upon him and seemed to rob his brain of its normal functions, filling it instead with wild, fantastic, terrifying thoughts; then a mental suffocation, as one buried alive—forgotten. That had taken a strangling hold upon him—he was shut off, lost—if he should be forgotten there! He had slept, and waked to watch for those yellow threads; and had slept again and waked once more still to find they had not come, then—

His train of thought was rudely interrupted, and with a shock he was brought back to his immediate surroundings. A convict, with face like chalk, his eyes staring, came racing madly from the stock-room—and then the words poured from him in a high-pitched, jumbled torrent.

"Wenger's seen him!" he yelled. "It's all up. Four months diggin' down to the brick, a handful at a time, my Gawd, an' it's all up! He's seen Scotty comin' out from beneath the lumber pile. It's all up, Twisty—an' us down to the sewer with only a few bricks to kick loose!"

In Twisty was no misplaced leadership.

"Den beat it now!" he screamed. "It's our only chance. Youse guys knows what to do. Croak Wenger first, an' beat it! Spud, you an' de Mouser get de rest uv dem bricks loose an'—"

The words were drowned in wild confusion—Varge was already racing toward the stock-room door—over his shoulder he saw the instructor crumple up and wriggle to the floor from a blow over the head from a