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"When we took him up all limber there in the dark, and the wet on him made us think of blood, it was you; you whispered: 'God ha' mercy—this lad's alive!'

"The warder he hears an' says, 'He won't be long when we stick him in his hole. An' no more talking, or it's a supper o' cat tails for you, all you!'

"Then we went slipping through the mud in the dark an' rain. By that pile o' sacks and lumber Brundage he slipped down, tripping me, then you stumbled, and he fell, too—off the cart. Brundage comes up with a sack o' something—oakum, I think—instead of a man. An' I grabs hold. You too. An' no word spoke but the curses to hide our feelings—and on we go, holding our breath that the warder don't step on the body there an' yell out. But on we go, with the warder just swearing at the three of us there in the dark; and we dumped a sack of oakum in the hole an' covered it with lime an' mud! The lime, it hissed like fire. It knew it had been cheated, that lime.

"And he, before morning, he crawled in among the sacks and stuff. For days he hid there. We knew he had crawled away an' was hiding, because if he had been found we would have been beat to death. An' of course nobody was searching for him. A lad we didn't know, an' had never seen before, but we took the chance to do it just to cheat the damned old gibbet an' the lime-hole that we hated!