Now that he was sure to die, he seemed to make no more of the fact than of any other indifferent thing. I do not mean that he was careless of his fate. He took everything seriously. But facts were to him facts, and he did not worry over them. He did not think it worth while. So when he was sentenced to death, he adjusted his blankets in the proper order so that he might not have a nightmare, and slept the sleep of the contented. With all my contempt for Beavers I was sorry that he was to die. There was something in the reckless character of the man that appealed to me. Something that made me feel that it was a pity that this abundant life should be extinguished by a rifle shot. I had been thinking all night. I had thought of every argument in his favor. I had searched my mind to see if any point had been neglected. Early in the night I had gone to Beavers, and asked him for the aid of suggestion--suggestion that might lead to information. But here again his habits balked me. He said: “I’m gambling in this case on your brains.” I might myself have been willing to do that, but I was gambling with Beavers’s life for a stake. Beavers was of course just that kind of man, whom a self-respecting person feels it his duty to despise; but somehow I could not quite despise Beavers. His coolness appealed to me strongly. His bravado seemed a sort of bravery. His readiness to meet the consequences, and pay the penalties of his own misdeeds, was a thing hard to distinguish from heroism. He had no principles, of course. He did not pretend to have any. But he had certain methods of thought which seemed to serve him in lieu of principles. It was just before dawn. I had not slept. As I lay in my tent with the flaps thrown back, all that was discernible was the rather spectral-looking tented city with its precise white rows. I had become so nervous, staring through the dark at the place where I knew the tent pole to be, that at last I turned out for good. I tightened my belt. It was our habit to sleep in our clothes--for reasons. The first gray of the morning touched the camp, and looking down the row I saw a fragile figure moving from one tent to another, and pausing occasionally in uncertainty. At first I could not be certain whether it was a woman or not. Finally the figure straightened up and stood looking towards the guardhouse; it was that of a woman. I had not seen a woman in two months. The camp was silent with that quietude that is so impressive just before the dawn. After staring at the guardhouse for a moment, while I stood staring at her, the woman turned her eyes and we stood looking at each other. After halting a moment she came staggering up the narrow lane between the two rows of tents, making a peculiar, nervous movement with her hands, but saying nothing. She stood for a few moments a little way from the tent door, clasping and unclasping her hands.