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.

He appeared old, pitiable, a wreck.