Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/88

 touched his horse with the spurs and was galloping on ahead.

"It ain't pleasant," said Marston, with gruff kindness. "But you do what they tell you in there—that's the only way to get along. That's Kingman, one of the outside patrol—they say he's never been known to forget a face."

Varge made no reply. They were passing the end of the wall now that flanked the road. A guard stopped in his pacing and, leaning on the iron railing near the little circular guard-house on the corner of the wall, looked down upon them.

The sleigh stopped. Marston took Varge's arm and got out. They were in front of a large stone building set forward a little from the penitentiary walls which joined it on either side. The sheriff led the way up the short flight of steps to the entrance. A key grated in a ponderous lock, the heavy bolt shot back with harsh resonancy, a guard flung open the door and blocked the way for a moment as he stared into Varge's face—it was the same callous stare, galling, contemptuously impersonal—then he stepped aside, allowing them to enter.

A short hallway was before them, and at its end, the entrance to the prison proper, was a massive steel-barred door. Halfway down the hall, a room opened off on the left-hand side. The door of this room was open, and the sheriff, nodding familiarly to the guard and with his hand still on Varge's arm, turned toward it at once and stepped inside.

It was a square, spacious room. Varge's eyes swept it with a quick, comprehensive glance—and for the