Jack had said that he loved life and would hate to leave it; and yet he sat there calmly, scraping idly with his boot-toe a little furrow in the loose sand, his elbows resting on his knees, his face unlined by frown or bitterness, his eyes bent abstractedly upon the shallow trench he was desultorily digging.

He did not look as the boy believed a man should look who has just been condemned to die the ignominious death of hanging.

The boy shuddered and went out into the sunlight, dazed with this glimpse he had got of the inexorable hardness of life.
Jack did not even know when the boy left.

He, also, was looking upon the hardness of life, but he was looking with the eyes of the fighter.
So long as Jack Allen had breath in his body, he would fight to keep it there.

His incredulity against the verdict swung to a tenacious disbelief that it would really come to the worst.