Page:9009 (1908).djvu/151

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9009

damental within him, as granite is fundamental of the earth. He sat down and waited. They changed him again to another cell. And then to another. He spent nearly three years in different cells, and then, one morning, he found himself again in the cell where he had sawed. That night he tested the bars. They were as he had left them, three years before. Three of them were severed but for a thread of steel; the guards had discovered nothing. He began purring at the fourth bar.

He worked craftily, with stealth, at night, very slowly; for before him lay years, the eternity of time placed, by a trick of Fate, at the disposal of his purpose; and it was silly to take chances. He worked in the shadows, crouched, rubbing evenly, quietly, but firmly, cutting bars of steel with needles. When he had done each night, he scattered with deep breaths of his lungs the almost imperceptible little heap of steel dust resulting, and smudged over the thin wound in the bar with a bit of moistened bread and lamp-black. So he lived, eating but little,

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