Let him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found
out? Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no,
no. If I had died at the bottom there," and he made an emphatic
swing at the ditch with his manacled hands, "I'd have held to him
with that grip, that you should have been safe to find him in my
hold."
The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
companion, repeated, "He tried to murder me. I should have been a
dead man if you had not come up."
"He lies!" said my convict, with fierce energy. "He's a liar born,
and he'll die a liar. Look at his face; ain't it written there? Let
him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it."
The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not,
however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set
expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the
marshes and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.
"Do you see him?" pursued my convict. "Do you see what a villain he
is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he
looked when we were tried together. He never looked at me."
The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his
eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a
moment on the speaker, with the words, "You are not much to look
at," and with a half-taunting glance at the bound hands.
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