And whether it was or not, Mag, it was all I got, after all.
For--would you believe Tom Dorgan would turn out such a sorehead?
He's kicked up such a row ever since he got there, that it's the
dark cell for him, and solitary confinement. Think of it--for
Tom!

I begged, I bluffed, I cried, I coaxed, but many's the Nance
Olden that has played her game against the rules of Sing Sing,
and lost. They wouldn't even let me leave the things for him, or
give him a message from me. And back to the station I had to
carry the basket, and all the schemes I had to make old Tom
Dorgan grin.

All the way back I had him in my mind. He's a tiger--Tom--when
he's roused. I could see him, shut up there by himself, with not
a soul to talk to, with not a human eye to look into, with not a
thing on earth to do--Tom, who's action itself! He never was much
of a thinker, and I never saw him read even a newspaper. What
would he do to kill the time? Can't you see him there, at bay,
back on his haunches, cursing and cursed, alone in the
everlasting black silence?

I saw nothing else. Wherever I turned my eyes, that terrible
picture was before me. And always it was just on the verge of
becoming something else--something worse. He could throttle the
world with his bare hands, if it had but one neck, in the mood he
must be in now.

It was when I couldn't bear it a moment longer that I set my mind
to find something else to think of.