Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/87

 short-barrelled carbine lay across the pommel of his saddle. The man did not speak. He edged his horse a little nearer to the sleigh and leaned from the saddle for a long and closer view of Varge's face—as though to note the minutest detail of every feature. And but once, during a full five minutes, did the man remove his eyes from Varge—to pick up his horse as the animal stumbled. Then his eyes came back again instantly.

A slow flush crept to Varge's face—and died away. He understood well enough—too well. It was the first searing touch of the branding iron that marked him as one of a herd—and it was more than that. It was the first touch of the whip—from the master. And it was meant for that—the rude, callous, prolonged, contemptuous stare, meant for that—meant to instil within him even before he passed inside those looming walls, so close now, upon whose tops men paced with carbines on their arms, a fear, a prescience that should break his spirit, bend his will, a grim, subtle, mocking invitation, with an iron-mailed fist behind it, to begin then and there to understand that he was—a convict.

And, in his fine sensitiveness, it roused within Varge a cold merciless fury. After one glance his eyes had dropped and fixed on the driver's back in front of him—he dared not keep his eyes on the other's face. Every instinct within him prompted him to leap to his feet, tear the steel links on his wrists apart—yes, he could break them—and fling himself upon this man who thought so ruthlessly, so readily to rob him, to strip him of his God-given franchise of manhood.

Marston stirred a little uneasily. The tension broke. Varge felt the gaze lifted from him. The man had