of the cheerful intelligence, which is to the effect that he is to die by the iron collar to-morrow.
"Will you leave the light?" he requests.
The smoky lantern is set upon the floor. Then the door clangs to, there is a rattle of chains and the echo of departing footsteps and he is alone.
CHAPTER XLIX.
EL CALABOZO DE INFIERNO.
An ordinary man, suddenly placed in the position in
which Jack Ashley finds himself, would perhaps exhaust
his strength in useless imprecations upon his oppressors,
and finish by sinking into utter hopelessness as to his
fate.
But, as was intimated when the reader first made his acquaintance, Jack Ashley is not an ordinary man. The practice of self-restraint has enabled him to retain to a remarkable degree his self-possession at more than one exciting moment, and his sublime confidence in himself is never wanting.
Clearly his arrest has been arbitrary and unofficial. He has not even been searched. His watch and money, his papers, even his revolver, are upon his person.
"And best of all, they have not deprived me of this incomparable solace," he says, as he draws a cigar from his pocket and lights it at the smoky little lantern in the cell. Then he throws himself on the wretched straw couch, to think of some way out of the snare into which he has stumbled.
Isabel Harding has undoubtedly imparted to Truenos all she knows, all she suspects. But suspicion is not proof. And the strongest suspicion would not have warranted, much less likely have caused, such an outrage upon a citizen of the United States.
