Bud lay passive for a few minutes. The cold wind slithered in beneath the door and marked him as with a knife-blade where it touched his skin. It played with his disheveled black hair. It worried, like a playful pup, the bottom edges of his trousers and his ankles. It maddened him like something alive bent upon teasing. He kicked out at it with both tied feet. And the man who had done all this was the man he had allowed to go when he had drawn a sure bead on his heart that day in the cove. What a cussed fool he had been not to put an end to him then and there! God give him one more such chance--just one more! God give him half a chance--just a fighting chance! With a gun or a knife or with his naked fists. He had not fought with his hands since he was a boy, but now he felt the instincts of a mountain cat. He craved to claw and to tear. He ached to bite with his yellow teeth as animals bite. Again he tested his strength until the muscles in his throat stood out like whipcords. He could not understand why the rope did not break. With the strength now latent in him he felt that he could snap iron chains. It was maddening. When finally he sank back once again limp after his effort, he felt a choking sensation in his throat like that which comes to small boys helpless in their rage. Something akin to tears moistened his hard blue eyes. To offset this, he voiced an ugly oath below his breath. He flopped over on his side to relieve the weight of his body on his hands. There was humiliation in that act itself. It gave him the effect of groveling. He had seen dogs, belly to the ground, crawl along like that, and it always filled him with contempt. He felt the same contempt for himself. But quickly following every such emotion came his black rage against Allston--the man who forced upon him each additional torment. Gawd A’mighty! But all this while Bud spoke never a word out loud. There were moments when he could have shrieked in rage; there were other moments when wild oaths sought expression. But every time so tempted he brought his thin lips tight over his teeth. Had Allston himself come out here, he would have been met with stolid silence. Speech to Bud, when highly moved, expressed nothing. It was too utterly inadequate. His emotions drove him to stolidness--to the stoicism of the Indian. At the end of ten minutes Bud had spent in unavailing struggle the first mad onrush of his blind rage. By brute force he had failed to accomplish anything except to lacerate his flesh. He accepted this fact as a fresh humiliation. He had pride in his physical strength. The deepest satisfaction he could have had at the moment would have been to burst these bonds Allston had fastened upon him.