of iron, ran along the walls and held a tin ewer and basin, a few
books, and a pile of clothing neatly folded.

Across the angle niche between the windows a wooden bench had been
drawn; in front of it stood a chair and oval table, on which lay some
sheets of paper, pen and ink, and a great bunch of yellow jasmine, and
wild pink azaleas that lavishly sprinkled the air with their delicate
spicery. Pencils, crayons, charcoal and several large squares of
cardboard and drawing-paper were heaped at one end of the bench, and
beside these sat the occupant of the cell, leaning with folded arms on
the table in front of her; and holding in her lap the vicious,
ocelot-eyed yellow cat.

Against the shimmering glory of Spring sunshine streaming down upon
her, head and throat were outlined like those of haloed martyrs that
Mantegna and Sodoma left as imperishable types of patient suffering.

When the visitor came forward to the table that barred nearer approach,
she made no attempt to rise, and for a moment both were mute. He saw
the noble head shorn of its splendid coronal of braids, and covered
thickly with short, waving, bronzed tendrils of silky hair, that held
in its glistening mesh the reddish lustre of old gold, and the deep
shadows of time-mellowed mahogany. That most skilful of all sculptors,
hopeless sorrow, had narrowed to a perfect oval the wan face, waxen in
its cold purity; and traced about the exquisite mouth those sad,
patient curves that attest suffering which sublimates, that belong
alone to the beauty of holiness. Eyes unusually large and shadowy now,
beneath their black fringes, were indescribably eloquent with the
pathos of a complete, uncomplaining surrender to woes that earth could
never cure; and the slender wasted fingers, in their bloodless
semi-transparency, might have belonged to some chiselled image of
death. Every jot and tittle of the degrading external badges of felony
had been meted out, and instead of the mourning garment she had worn in
court, her dress to-day was of the coarse dark-blue home-spun checked
with brown, which constituted the prison uniform of female convicts.

As Mr. Dunbar noted the solemn repose, the pathetic grace with which
she endured the symbols that emblazoned her ignominous doom, a dark red
glow suffused his face, a flush of shame for the indignity which he had
been impotent to avert.

"Who dared to cut your hair--and thrust that garb upon you? They
promised me you should