her she always
burns her way out. I think she is the worst case we have, except the
young mulatto--I don't see her here just now--who was sent up for life,
for poisoning a baby she was hired to nurse. There is Mrs. Singleton."

The warden's wife came forward with a vial in one hand, and at sight of
the visitor, paused and held out the other.

"How'dy do, Mr. Dunbar. You are waiting to see Ned?"

"I much prefer seeing you, if you have leisure for an interview.
Singleton can join us when the inspectors take their leave."

"Very well; come up stairs. Jarvis, send Ned up as soon as you can."

She led the way to the room where her two children were at play, and
breaking a ginger cake between them, dragged their toys into one
corner, and bade them build block houses, without a riot.

"I have never received even a verbal reply to the note which I
requested your husband to place in Miss Brentano's hands."

"Probably you never will. She took cold by being dragged back and forth
to court during that freezing weather, and two days after her
conviction she was taken ill with pneumonia. First one lung, then the
other, and the case took a typhoid form. For six weeks she could not
lift her head, and now though she goes about my rooms, and into the
yard a little, she is awfully shattered, and has a bad cough, Once when
we had scarcely any hope, she asked the doctor to give her no more
medicine; said that it would be a mercy to let her die. Poor thing! her
proud spirit is as broken as her body, and the thought of being seen
seems to torture her. Dyce is the only person whom she allows to come
near her."

"Where is she?"

"We were obliged to move her, after she was sentenced, but the doctor
said one of those cells down stairs would be certain and quick death
for her, with her lungs in such a condition; so we put her in the
smallest room on this floor; the last one at the end of the corridor.
It is only a closet it is true, but it is right in the angle, and has
two narrow slits of windows, one opening south, the other west, and the
sunshine gets in. The day after her trial ended, she sent for the
sheriff, who happened to be here, and asked him if solitary confinement
was not considered a more severe penalty than any other form here? When
he told her it was, she said: Then it could not be construed into
clemency or favoritism if you ordered me into solitary confinement?
Certainly not, he told her. Whereupon she begged him to allo