And he pursued the Minute,
calling upon it to come to him, and the name by which he called it was
Mary. Then he saw that the square of the window had become yellow with
the sun, and that through it he could hear plainly the voices of the
Leslies talking in high tones.
His brain was very clear, more so than usual, and he not only received
many impressions, and ordered them with ease and despatch, but his very
senses seemed more than ordinarily acute. He could distinguish even by
day, when the night stillness had withdrawn its favouring conditions,
the borings of the sawdust insects in the logs of the cabin. Only he
was very tired. His hands seemed a long distance away, as though it
would require an extraordinary effort of the will to lift them. So he
lay quiet and listened.
The conversation, of which he was the eavesdropper, was carried on by
fits and starts. First a sentence would be delivered by one of the
Leslies; then would ensue a pause as though for a reply, inaudible to
any but the interlocutors themselves; then another sentence; and so on,
like a man at a telephone. After a moment's puzzling over it,
Bennington understood that Jim Leslie was talking to one of the
prisoners down the shaft.
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