swift transformation, it was he that sprang, leap-frog fashion; his hand that pumped, up and down, up and down; his knees that grasped a thick gurgling neck—and the neck was not that of the garotter.
He waited, grimly patient, day after day, week after week. At times, without much conviction, he tried to coax on the favourable moment; and this resulted in what the prison officials took for attempts at escaping—attempts incredibly stupid.
On one Sunday, for instance, he wandered into the office of the captain of the yard under the excuse of drawing a new suit of underwear. He could hear the voice of Jennings in the inner office, and he was very long in picking his garment, rejecting suit after suit under flimsy pretexts; then after finally he had had to choose, loitered in the outer corridor, aimlessly, till Wilson, with the unerring instinct of the informer, becoming suspicious, ordered him out. He cursed Wilson; and for this he was given a week in the dungeon.
