holding his copper. He saw the garotter approaching with his basket of shuttles. He looked toward the red-striped convict, standing there with folded arms, his eyes downcast upon the loom’s lower rollers. Something new, suddenly, had come into the man’s face.
It was something impalpable, yet fairly screaming with meaning. It lay behind the mask, far back in the dull eyes. Something couchant there for days had moved; it had gathered itself and crouched, now, quivering. And in the mask had come a new heaviness, a heaviness that was a satisfaction, almost a satiety. But the man still stood motionless, his arms folded upon his breast, his face turned down.
The garotter came toward him; and, as it always did, his walk changed; he bent forward, touching the floor with the balls of his feet only, his eyes upon the red-striped convict. He stopped—and he did not see what was in the other’s downcast, averted eyes, the thing crouching in ambush there. He laid down his bas-
