Kornicker hesitated; and then thrusting it in his pocket, said: 'I suppose, if you should happen to be short, you'll let me know.'
'I will,' replied Rust; 'but I've enough to last until my sand is run out. They'll hang me.'
'Don't talk so,' exclaimed Kornicker, with a feeling not a little akin to fear, at the cold, indifferent manner in which the other spoke. 'You _may_ escape--who knows?'
Rust looked at him steadily, and then said, in a low, calm voice: 'If it were not that man and law were leagued against me to _force_ me to my doom, not one dollar would Michael Rust give to add an hour to his life. He looks to the grave only as that dark abyss which knows neither thought nor care; where the past is forgotten; where the future ends. Death is but a deep dreamless sleep, which has no waking. Yet even this boon he will not accept, if it's _forced_ upon him.'
'But the disgrace, the disgrace of such an end,' exclaimed Mr. Kornicker, twisting his fingers together, and in his earnestness cracking the knuckles of all of them. 'Think of that, my old fellow. Think of the stain that will always rest upon your memory.'
A smile, without a trace of pleasure, but cold and icy, passed across Rust's face.
'What is my memory to me? What care I for the whispers and sneers and surmises of the reptiles who crowd this world, and who will soon be as _I_ then shall be? What are these very men themselves? Shadows!--shadows! Go--my course is chosen. You can do nothing for me.'
Still Kornicker did not show any intention of quitting the room, but shifted from one leg to the other, in a fidgety manner, as if he had something farther to communicate, upon which however he did not like to venture. At last he said: 'Your daughter?'
Rust turned a quick keen eye on him, but farther than this evinced no emotion.
'Perhaps she may need a friend, when--when----'
'I'm dead,' said Rust, concluding what seemed to be rather an embarrassing sentence to Kornicker.
'I'm not exactly the fellow to make the offer,' said Kornicker, adopting the conclusion which Rust had given to the phrase; 'but--but I'll keep an eye on her, and will lend her a helping hand if she gets in trouble.'
Rust's countenance expressed neither pleasure nor anger, as he answered: