“I should mention though, that, before closing my eyes, I several times shifted my position. I had gone first to the farther end of the boiler, then again I had crawled back to the manhole, to put my hand out and feel that it was really still open. The warmest place was at the farther end, where I finally established myself, and that I knew from the first. It was foolish in me to think that the opening through which I had just entered could be closed without my hearing it, and that, too, when no one was astir but myself; but the blow on the side of my face made me a little nervous perhaps; besides, I never could bear to be shut up in any place—it always gives a wild-like feeling about the head. You may laugh, Stranger, but I believe I should suffocate in an empty church, if I once felt that I was so shut up in it that I could not get out. I have met men afore now just like me, or worse rather—much worse. Men that it made sort of furious to be tied down to anything, yet so soft-like and contradictory in their natures that you might lead them anywhere so long as they didn’t feel the string. Stranger, it takes all sorts of people to make a world! and we may have a good many of the worst kind of white-men here out west. But I have seen folks upon this river—quiet looking chaps, too, as ever you see—who were so teetotally _carankterakterous_ that they’d shoot the doctor who’d tell them they couldn’t live when ailing, and make a die of it, just out of spite, when told they _must_ get well. Yes, fellows as fond of the good things of earth as you or I, yet who’d rush like mad right over the gang-plank of life, if once brought to believe that they had to stay in this world whether they wanted to leave it or not. Thunder and bees! if such a fellow as that had heard the cocks crow as I did—awakened to find darkness about him—darkness so thick you might cut it with a knife—heard other sounds, too, to tell that it was morning, and scrambling to fumble for that manhole, found it, too, black—closed—black and even as the rest of the iron coffin around him, closed, with not a rivet-hole to let God’s light and air in—why—why—he’d ’a _swounded_ right down on the spot, as I did, and I ain’t ashamed to own it to no white-man.” The big drops actually stood upon the poor fellow’s brow, as he now paused for a moment in the recital of his terrible story. He passed his hand over his rough features, and resumed it with less agitation of manner.