brought back a wreck and flung on the stone floor of my stone-walled,
iron-doored dungeon.

They came for me. Ungraciously and ungently, with blow and curse, they
haled me forth, and I faced Captain Jamie and Warden Atherton, themselves
arrayed with the strength of half a dozen state-bought, tax-paid brutes
of guards who lingered in the room to do any bidding. But they were not
needed.

"Sit down," said Warden Atherton, indicating a stout arm-chair.

I, beaten and sore, without water for a night long and a day long, faint
with hunger, weak from a beating that had been added to five days in the
dungeon and eighty hours in the jacket, oppressed by the calamity of
human fate, apprehensive of what was to happen to me from what I had seen
happen to the others--I, a wavering waif of a human man and an erstwhile
professor of agronomy in a quiet college town, I hesitated to accept the
invitation to sit down.

Warden Atherton was a large man and a very powerful man. His hands
flashed out to a grip on my shoulders. I was a straw in his strength. He
lifted me clear of the floor and crashed me down in the chair.

"Now," he said, while I gasped and swallowed my pain, "tell me all about
it, Standing. Spit it out--all of it, if you know what's healthy for
you."

"I don't know anything about what has happened . . .", I began.

That was as far as I got. With a growl and a leap he was upon me. Again