ou remember we had a
little wager. Don't bother to unlace me first. Just give the Bull
Durham and cigarette papers to Morrell and Oppenheimer. And for full
measure here's another smile."

"Oh, I know your kind, Standing," the Warden lectured. "But it won't get
you anything. If I don't break you, you'll break all strait-jacket
records."

"He's broken them already," Doctor Jackson said. "Who ever heard of a
man smiling after ten days of it?"

"Well and bluff," Warden Atherton answered. "Unlace him, Hutchins."

"Why such haste?" I queried, in a whisper, of course, for so low had life
ebbed in me that it required all the little strength I possessed and all
the will of me to be able to whisper even. "Why such haste? I don't
have to catch a train, and I am so confounded comfortable as I am that I
prefer not to be disturbed."

But unlace me they did, rolling me out of the fetid jacket and upon the
floor, an inert, helpless thing.

"No wonder he was comfortable," said Captain Jamie. "He didn't feel
anything. He's paralysed."

"Paralysed your grandmother," sneered the Warden. "Get him up on his
feat and you'll see him stand."

Hutchins and the doctor dragged me to my feet.

"Now let go!" the Warden commanded.

Not all at once could life return into the body that had been practically
dead for ten days, and as a result, with no power as yet over my flesh, I
gave at the knees, crumpled, pitched sidewise, and gashed my forehead
against the wall.

"You see," said Captain Jamie.

"Good acting," retorted the Warden. "That man's got nerve to do
anything."

"You're right, Warden," I whispered from the floor. "I did it on
purpose. It was a stage fall. Lift me up again, and I'll repeat it. I
promise you lots of fun."

I shall not dwell upon the agony of returning circulation. It was to
become an old story with me, and it bore its share in cutting the lines
in my face that I shall carry to the scaffold.

When they finally left me I lay for the rest of the day stupid and half-
comatose. There is such a thing as anaesthesia of pain, engendered by
pain too exquisite to be borne. And I have known that anaesthesia.

By evening I was able to crawl about my cell, but not yet could I stand
up. I drank much water, and cleansed myself as well as I could; but not
until next day could I bring myself to eat, and then only by deliberate
force of my will.

The program me, as given me by Warden Atherton, was that