XXIX
Day broke on the old Court House with its black port-holes, on the
graystone jail, and on a tall topless wooden box to one side, from
which projected a cross-beam of green oak. From the centre of this
beam dangled a rope that swung gently to and fro when the wind
moved. And with the day a flock of little birds lighted on the
bars of the condemned man's cell window, chirping through them,
and when the jailer brought breakfast he found Bad Rufe cowering
in the corner of his cell and wet with the sweat of fear.
"Them damn birds ag'in," he growled sullenly.
"Don't lose yo' nerve, Rufe," said the jailer, and the old laugh
of defiance came, but from lips that were dry.
"Not much," he answered grimly, but the jailer noticed that while
he ate, his eyes kept turning again and again to the bars; and the
turnkey went away shaking his head. Rufe had told the jailer, his
one friend through whom he had kept in constant communication with
the Tollivers, how on the night after the shooting of Mockaby,
when he lay down to sleep high on the mountain side and under some
rhododendron bushes, a flock of little birds flew in on him like a
gust of rain and perched over and around him, twittering at him
until he had to get up and pace the woods, and how, throughout the
next day, when he sat in the sun planning his escape, those birds
would sweep chattering over his head and sweep chattering back
again, and in that mood of despair he had said once, and only
once: "Somehow I knowed this time my name was Dennis"--a phrase of
evil prophecy he had picked up outside the hills.
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