The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
then his eyes came to Clélie and myself, but he did not return the
greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
lips--a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
Clélie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
falling to his choking gasps.

"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I
said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
soul.

He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
creature.