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. At that point, my convict
became so frantically exasperated, that he would have rushed upon him
but for the interposition of the soldiers. "Didn't I tell you," said the
other convict then, "that he would murder me, if he could?" And any one
could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out upon his
lips curious white flakes, like thin snow.
"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant. "Light those torches."
As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went down
on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the first time,
and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on the brink of the ditch
when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at him eagerly when
he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had
been waiting for him to see me that I might try to assure him of my
innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended
my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it
all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for
a day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having
been more attentive.