"Say, Mickey, this shrimp's goin' to die."

"Stop your noise!" was all the answer he got. But presently our man
tried it again. He drew himself to the gratings, grasping them with his
hands, and looking out through them, sat waiting till the officer was
passing once more, and then said:

"Sweetness, you'd better mind your eye, now, because you beats have
killed this cuss. 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