"Yes, sir; but I don't mind that."

"How long?"

"Twenty-three months."

"On bread and water?"

"Yes; but that was all I wanted."

"Have you reflected that so long as you harbor a determination to kill
the warden you may be kept in the dungeon? You can't live much longer
there, and if you die there you will never find the chance you want. If
you say you will not kill the warden he may return you to the cells."

"But that would be a lie, sir; I will get a chance to kill him if I go
to the cells. I would rather die in the dungeon than be a liar and
sneak. If you send me to the cells I will kill him. But I will kill him
without that. I will kill him, sir.... And he knows it."

Without concealment, but open, deliberate, and implacable, thus in the
wrecked frame of a man, so close that we could have touched it, stood
Murder,--not boastful, but relentless as death.

"Apart from weakness, is your health good?" asked the chairman.

"Oh, it's good enough," wearily answered the convict. "Sometimes the
twisting comes on, but when I wake up after it I'm all right."

The prison surgeon, under the chairman's direction, put his ear to the
convict's chest, and then went over and whispered to the chairman.

"I thought so," said that gentleman. "Now, take this man to the
hospital. Put him to bed where the sun will shine on him, and give him
the most nourishing food."

The convict, giving no heed to this, shambled out with a guard and the
surgeon.

* * * * *

The warden sat alone in the prison office with No. 14,208. That he at
last should have been brought face to face, and alone, with the man
whom he had determined to kill, perplexed the convict. He was not
manacled; the door was locked, and the key lay on the table between the
two men. Three weeks in the hospital had proved beneficial, but a
deathly pallor was still in his face.

"The action of the directors three weeks ago," said the warden, "made
my resignation necessary. I have awaited the appointment of my
successor, who is now in charge. I leave the prison to-day. In the mean
time, I have something to tell you that will interest you. A few days
ago a man who was discharged from the prison last year read what the
papers have published recently about your case, and he has written to
me confessing that it was he who got your tobacco from the captain of
the guard. His name is Salter, and he looks very much like you. He had