He had tried to
fight it out but gave up in a burst of passionate protest to Dr. Craven.
The sight of his eye was failing. The horror of blindness chilled his
soul.
"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.
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