You've busted his head and he'll pass in his checks
before sun-up. You better go for a doctor, now, you bet you had."
The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club,
that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the
flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half dozen
policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the dungeon.
But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a
conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk had
made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry, and
shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the bruised
man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face, striped
with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant. The doctor examined
the man's broken head also, and presently said:
"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, may be too
late now."
Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him, and
they kept up a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen
minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the
prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the
wounded man, but toward daylight he died.
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