me."

What Colonel Price replied Joe could not hear, for his low-modulated
voice of culture was like velvet beside a horse-blanket compared to the
sheriff's.

"I'm over on this side, colonel, sir," said Joe before he could see
him.

And then the colonel stepped into the light which came through the cell
window, bringing with him one who seemed as fair to Joe in that somber
place as the bright creatures who stood before Jacob in Bethel that
night he slept with his head upon a stone.

"This is my daughter," said Colonel Price. "We called in to kind of
cheer you up."

She offered Joe her hand between the bars; his went forward to meet it
gropingly, for it lacked the guidance of his eyes.

Joe was honey-bound, like an eager bee in the heart of some great golden
flower, tangled and leashed in a thousand strands of her hair. The lone
sunbeam of his prison had slipped beyond the lintel of his low door, as
if it had timed its coming to welcome her, and now it lay like a hand in
benediction above her brow.

Her hair was as brown as wild honey; a golden glint lay in it here and
there under the sun, like the honeycomb. A smile kindled in her brown
eyes as she looked at him, and ran out to the corners of them in little
crinkles, then moved slowly upon her lips. Her face was quick with the
eagerness of youth, and she was tall.

"I'm surely beholden to you, Miss Price, for this favor," said Joe,
lapsing into the Kentucky mode of speech, "and I'm ashamed to be caught
in such a place as this."

"You have nothing to be ashamed of," said she; "we know you are
innocent."

"Thank you kindly, Miss Price," said he with quaint, old courtesy that
came to him from some cavalier of Cromwell's day.

"I thought you'd better meet Alice," explained the colonel, "and get
acquainted with her, for young people have tastes in common that old
codgers like me have outgrown. She might see some way that I would
overlook to make you more comfortable here during the time you will be
obliged to wait."

"Yes, sir," said Joe, hearing the colonel's voice, but not making much
out of what he was saying.

He was thinking that out of the gloom of his late cogitations she had
come, like hope hastening to refute the argument of the horse-thief. His
case could not be so despairing with one like her believing in him. It
was a matter beyond a person such as a horse-thief, of course. One of a
finer nature could understand.

"Father spoke of some books,