Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/234

210 yesterday loomed clear-cut like the angles of a wall. He had talked, talked. It was the deadliest error. In the name of that notorious Simon of infantile record, was there no God to save the witless from himself?

The crowd passed out of the court-room, and, sauntering down by the office of the miserable deputy, paused to harpoon him as it drifted by. The weather was fine for scaffold building, it observed. Would the deputy spring the trap in the absence of his chief? it was interested to know. Could he tie a hangman's knot? Would he be pleased to have the gracious assistance of his fellows? And more ingenious proddings, while the weary Jenkins perspired and shrunk, but was silent. This he had learned: like as the great lessons of life by hap learned too late.

And that same night John Bartlett and Robert Gilmore hurrying eastward in a Pullman car on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad remarked with large favorable comment that the ancient doctrine of lex vigilantibus non dormientums subvenit was marvellously true in this practical time.