Trooper Tales — page 211: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Last Cell to the Right. 197 woman at the last cell moved her horrid eyes toward me _ as I entered. And so five days passed—five days in which I became aged and unmanned—five days in which | atoned for all my sins, past and to be. And all the while Tad became more and more like a child which is fed, and the white army shirt which she wore for a gown grew darker, like the one which was ashes. And all the while the fleshless water-woman swung in through the iron gate and car- ried her burden away. And the man was never silent, and the mad-eyed mother changed not. The sixth evening I clung to the trooper who brought supper to me. I spoke no words—only clung to him. Fiercer than ever the temptation besought me to strike the jailer down as he smiled and beckoned after the call for retreat had sounded. I tried to sing, but my voice was hoarse and broken. I could not smoke, for I had not eaten. The darkness was moving with shadows. I cannot tell the time it all happened. It is horrid for me to think of it now. There was the scream of a child. I never heard the voice before, but it was from T'ad’s throat! An instant later the black tomb below the flagging was filled with cries—but they did not last. I sprang to the bars of my cell ere the sounds had ceased to vibrate in the dark chamber. And in the white moonbeams of the plaza I saw the mother of the baby girl crawling slowly from the well curb toward the entrance of the last cell to the right. - And that moment as I Ilcoked something snapped in my (COMME NCKO KS, eC)