Sensation gradually returning to the overwrought watcher, he finds himself still miserably faint and weak. It is, however, _something_ to have escaped the spell of those death-glazed eyes, and, thanking God, he strives to get upon his feet. In his effort to rise, he stumbles clumsily over a small dark object upon the floor, close beside the bed. Regaining his poise, he discerns that it is the coarse, heavy shoe of a convict. He lifts it, thinking to place it beside its fellow beneath the cot. His hand is weak and nerveless. It escapes his grasp, and falls clattering to the floor. As it strikes, his ear is surprised by the click of some metallic substance. A small shining implement lies at his feet. He picks it up. It is a miniature steel saw, and must somehow have been concealed in this shoe of the dead man. Curiously examining _it_ and the shoe, he discovers (what in the dim light had at first eluded his notice) a displaced inner sole, thin, but firm and nicely fitted. Removing it, he sees that the shoe is still intact, and that this neatly adjusted super-sole was but an ingenious blind, adroitly concealing the precious implement, which, had fate proved less unkind, should have opened to the dead prisoner the long untrodden way of liberty.
It is not in Robert Henderson's nature to peach on a comrade, living or dead, and, carefully restoring the saw to its hiding-place, he readjusts the sham sole, and, with a touch of that reverence which one instinctively yields to the belongings of the dead, puts the shoe aside.
Still weak and trembling, but no longer magnetically drawn to the corpse, he totters to the grated window, which, to eke out the sick man's failing breath, has been left open. Dropping upon the rude stool beside it, he leans his yet dizzy head upon the sill. A wandering breath of the summer night steals gently in. How balmy it is, this tender night wind! And he, a worn creature at a prison grating, might be a gentle lady at her lattice, so softly it caresses his wasted cheek!
Yet, kindly as it is, it does not wholly restore his wonted vigour. At intervals, a deathly faintness oppresses him. A fearful sinking of heart and limb, as if life and courage were, together, oozing away. What if the end were indeed come, and he were to die to-night, unattended and alone; his filmy eyes looking their last upon earth, still confronted by that odious dead face, that, even in the world beyond, may still pursue him, as, for years, _another_ dead face has!