During the work hours he labored with uneasy haste, attempting, as the
day bore toward the sultry Mississippi sunset, to tire himself
physically so that in the evening he might sleep deeply from utter
exhaustion.... Then one afternoon in the second week he had a feeling
that two eyes were watching him from a place a few feet beyond one of
the guards. This aroused him to a sort of terror. He turned his back on
the eyes and shovelled feverishly, until it became necessary for him to
face about and go for more gravel. Then they entered his vision again,
and his already taut nerves tightened up to the breaking-point. The eyes
were leering at him. Out of a hot silence he heard his name called in a
tragic voice, and the earth tipped absurdly back and forth to a babel of
shouting and confusion.
When next he became conscious he was back in the guard-house, and the
other prisoners were throwing him curious glances. The eyes returned no
more. It was many days before he realized that the voice must have been
Dot's, that she had called out to him and made some sort of disturbance.
He decided this just previous to the expiration of his sentence, when
the cloud that oppressed him had lifted, leaving him in a deep,
dispirited lethargy.
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