CHAPTER XXIV
THE LOCK-UP
The sergeant had looked into the lock-up for the last time that night. He had made his last overture to the prisoner, had cursed and cuffed him for a sulky dog, and so taken leave of him for the night. Not a word had Erichsen uttered in all these hours. He had answered no question, replied to no taunt, nor yet once raised his eyes from the ground: there he sat, with a damp blanket about his torn body, and his rough yellow head between his hands. Food had been put before him, and remained there still. A pannikin of tea stood cold, and sour, and black with drowned flies, upon the ground. The flies were the worst of all his outward ills. But the shocking torments of a brain cruelly cleared by pain and weakness were worse than the flies.
And now he was alone for the night; the key had been turned in the padlock, and put in its place on the beam above; the sergeant’s bluster had died away, and the sergeant’s footsteps followed suit. Across the yard there came a laugh, an oath, a good-night ironically shouted, then a throwing-off of boots that jingled, and a shutting of doors. Now all was still, and in the lock-up the stillness was as unbroken as elsewhere. He never stirred but to shrug away a fly. The moon shone in through holes in the tin-lid roof, through crevices in the matchwood walls; and in the soft, sifted light he sat immovable. It was such a prison as a man of spirit could have broken with preposterous ease. But this one had no spirit left; he was no longer a man. His precious manhood had
