desolation and a broken heart.

About the sixth day, the man chanced to hear from an Indian that the boy
had quite broken down, and, refusing all food, lay moaning in his corner
all the time, and all the time crying for John Logan or Carrie. The man
now entreated more persistently than ever before. He promised the Doctor
to eat, to get well, if only the boy could be brought to him and be
permitted to spend his time there. For he knew from what the Doctor said
that he must soon die if things kept on as they were. The weather was
growing hotter and hotter; the water and the food, if possible, more
repulsive than ever. Logan could no longer walk across the pen in which
he was confined. He was so weak that he could not raise his heavily
manacled hands to his face.

After the usual diplomacy and delay, the Doctor reported his condition,
and also his earnest desire for the boy, to the Indian Agent.

There was a consultation. Would this crafty and desperate Indian attempt
to escape? Was not all this a ruse on his part? Would not the United
States imperil its peace and security if this boy and this man were to
be allowed together? This mighty question oppressed the mind of the
agent in charge for a whole day. Then, after the Doctor again urged the
prisoner's request--for man and boy both seemed to be dying--this man
reluctantly consented. Would Logan now escape after all? Could he ever
get through these iron bars and past the four soldiers pacing up and
down outside? Would he escape from the Reservation at last?

And now, at the close of the hottest and most dreadful day they had
endured, an old Indian woman, bent almost double, came shuffling in by
permission of the guard, and laid something on a pile of rushes and
willows in a corner of the pen across from where John Logan lay.

The man heard a noise as of some one breathing heavily, and attempted to
rise. He could hardly move his head. But in trying to support himself to
a sitting posture, he moved his hands, and so rattled his manacles. This
frightened the superstitious old woman, and she ran away. She had laid a
little skeleton on the rushes in the corner.

Logan with great effort managed to sit up and look across into the
corner that was now being slowly illuminated by a beam of bright, white
moonlight, that stole down the wall toward the little heap lying there,
like some holy, white-hooded and noiseless-footed nun. At last he saw
the face. It was that of little St