And now the dawn was coming, and at
last he was very tired. He shivered and tried to draw the shirt up over
his shoulders. They were getting stiff. He had never known they were cut
in the night. He looked up at the white light that came in through the
hole at the top of the door and shuddered. Then he turned his face back to
the ground and slept again.
Some hours later Bonaparte came toward the fuel-house with a lump of bread
in his hand. He opened the door and peered in; then entered, and touched
the fellow with his boot. Seeing that he breathed heavily, though he did
not rouse, Bonaparte threw the bread down on the ground. He was alive,
that was one thing. He bent over him, and carefully scratched open one of
the cuts with the nail of his forefinger, examining with much interest his
last night's work. He would have to count his sheep himself that day; the
boy was literally cut up. He locked the door and went away again.
"Oh, Lyndall," said Em, entering the dining room, and bathed in tears, that
afternoon, "I have been begging Bonaparte to let him out, and he won't."
"The more you beg the more he will not," said Lyndall.
She was cutting out aprons on the table.
"Oh, but it's late, and I think they want to kill him," said Em, weeping
bitterly; and finding that no more consolation was to be gained from her
cousin, she went off blubbering--"I wonder you can cut out aprons when
Waldo is shut up like that.
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