e again the young stranger, who seemed destined
to play the role of Ate in so many lives, would no longer be denied;
and at a swift gallop he took the road leading to the penitentiary.

Four or five carriages were drawn up in front of the iron gate, and
when, in answer to the bell, Jarvis, the underwarden, came forward to
admit Mr. Dunbar, he informed him that the State Inspectors were making
a tour of investigation through the building.

"I want to see Singleton."

"Just now he is engaged showing the inspectors around, and they
generally turn everything upside down, and inside out. If you will step
into the office and wait awhile, he will be at leisure."

"Where is Mrs. Singleton?"

"She has just gone into the women's workroom. One of the sewing gang is
epileptic, and fell in a fit a few minutes ago, so I sent for her. Come
this way and I will find her."

The visitor hesitated, drew back.

"Is Miss Brentano there also?"

"No. She is still on the infirmary list."

Jarvis opened the door of a long, well-lighted but narrow room, in the
centre of which was a table extending to the lower end; and on each
side of it sat women busily engaged in stitching and binding shoes, and
finishing off various articles of clothing; while two were ticketing a
pile of red flannel and blue hickory shirts. Four sewing-machines stood
near the wall where grated windows admitted sunshine, and their hymn to
Labor was the only sound that broke the brooding silence. The room was
scrupulously clean and tidy, and the inmates, wearing the regulation
uniform of blue-striped homespun, appeared comparatively neat; but
sordid, sullen, repulsively coarse and brutish were many of the
countenances bent over the daily task, and now and then swift, furtive
glances from downcast eyes betrayed close kinship with lower animals.

At one of the machines sat a woman whose age could not have exceeded
twenty-eight years, with a figure of the Juno type, and a beautiful
dark face where tawny chatoyant eyes showed the baleful fire of a
leopardess. Winding a bobbin, she leaned back in her chair, with the
indolent, haughty grace of a sultana, and when she held the bobbin up
against the light for an instant, her slender olive hand and rounded
wrist might have belonged to Cleopatra.

"Who is that woman winding thread?"

"Her name is Iva Le Bougeois, but we call her the 'Bloody Duchess'. She
was sent up here two years ago, from one of the lower counties, for
w