Never once questioning but that he was confronting the
closing scene of a grewsome tragedy, the thoroughly aroused lieutenant
dropped upon his knees beside them, his eyes already moist with
sympathy, his anxious fingers feeling for a possible heart-beat. A
moment of hushed, breathless suspense followed, and then he began
flinging terse, eager commands across his shoulder to where his men
were clustered.
"Here! Carson, Perry, Ronk, lay hold quick, and break this fellow's
clasp," he cried, briefly. "The girl retains a spark of life yet, but
the man's arms fairly crush her."
With all the rigidity of actual death those clutching hands held their
tenacious grip, but the aroused soldiers wrenched the interlaced
fingers apart with every tenderness possible in such emergency, shocked
at noting the expression of intense agony stamped upon the man's face
when thus exposed to view. The whole terrible story was engraven
there--how he had toiled, agonized, suffered, before finally yielding
to the inevitable and plunging forward in unconsciousness, written as
legibly as though by a pen. Every pang of mental torture had left
plainest imprint across that haggard countenance.
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