"My treatment here," he began with an effort at restraint, "is killing me by inches. Let them make shorter work of it. I can't sleep. No man can live without sleep. My jailers know this. I am never alone a moment--always the eye of a guard staring at me day and night. If I doze a feverish moment the noise of the relieving guard each two hours wakes me and the blazing lamp pours its glare into my aching throbbing eyes. There must be a change or I shall go mad or blind or both." He paused a moment and lifted his hollow face to the physician pathetically. "Have you ever been conscious of being watched? Of having an eye fixed on you every moment, scrutinizing your smallest act, the change of the muscles of your face or the pose of your body? To have a human eye riveted on you every moment, waking, sleeping, sitting, walking, is a refinement of torture never dreamed of by a Comanche Indian--it is the eye of a spy or an enemy gloating over the pain and humiliation which it creates. The lamp burning in my eyes is a form of torment devised by someone who knew my habit of life never to sleep except in total darkness. When I took old Black Hawk the Indian Chief a captive to our barracks at St. Louis I shielded him from the vulgar gaze of the curious. I have lived too long in the woods to be frightened by an owl and I've seen Death too often to flinch at any form of pain--but this torture of being forever watched is beginning to prey on my reason." The doctor's report that day was written in plain English: "I find Mr. Davis in a very critical state, his nervous debility extreme, his mind despondent, his appetite gone, complexion livid, and pulse denoting deep prostration of all vital energies. I am alarmed and anxious over the responsibility of my position. If he should die in prison without trial, subject to such severities as have been inflicted on his attenuated frame the world will form conclusions and with enough color to pass them into history." Dr. Craven was getting too troublesome. General Miles dismissed him, and called in Dr. George Cooper, a physician whose political opinions were supposed to be sounder. CHAPTER XLV THE MASTER MIND Socola read the story of the chaining of the Confederate Chieftain with indignation. His intimate association with Jefferson Davis had convinced him of his singular purity of character and loftiness of soul. That he was capable of conspiring to murder Abraham Lincoln was inconceivable. That the charge should be made and pressed seriously by the National Government was a disgrace to the country. Charles O'Connor, the greatest lawyer in America, indignant at the outrage, had offered his services to the prisoner. Socola hastened to a conference with O'Connor and placed himself at his command. The lawyer sent him to Washington to find out the master mind at the bottom of these remarkable proceedings.