ng it. 'You!'

'Yes,' she said, with indescribable earnestness. 'But why?'

'To make me easy in this jail. To make the time 'twixt this and death,
pass pleasantly. For my good--yes, for my good, of course,' he said,
grinding his teeth, and smiling at her with a livid face.

'Not to load you with reproaches,' she replied; 'not to aggravate the
tortures and miseries of your condition, not to give you one hard word,
but to restore you to peace and hope. Husband, dear husband, if you will
but confess this dreadful crime; if you will but implore forgiveness of
Heaven and of those whom you have wronged on earth; if you will dismiss
these vain uneasy thoughts, which never can be realised, and will rely
on Penitence and on the Truth, I promise you, in the great name of the
Creator, whose image you have defaced, that He will comfort and console
you. And for myself,' she cried, clasping her hands, and looking upward,
'I swear before Him, as He knows my heart and reads it now, that from
that hour I will love and cherish you as I did of old, and watch you
night and day in the short interval that will remain to us, and
soothe you with my truest love and duty, and pray with you, that one
threatening judgment may be arrested, and that our boy may be spared to
bless God, in his poor way, in the free air and light!'

He fell back and gazed at her while she poured out these words, as
though he were for a moment awed by her manner, and knew not what to do.
But anger and fear soon got the mastery of him, and he spurned her from
him.

'Begone!' he cried. 'Leave me! You plot, do you! You plot to get speech
with me, and let them know I am the man they say I am. A curse on you
and on your boy.'

'On him the curse has already fallen,' she replied, wringing her hands.

'Let it fall heavier. Let it fall on one and all. I hate you both. The
worst has come to me. The only comfort that I seek or I can have, will
be the knowledge that it comes to you. Now go!'

She would have urged him gently, even then, but he menaced her with his
chain.

'I say go--I say it for the last time. The gallows has me in its grasp,
and it is a black phantom that may urge me on to something more. Begone!
I curse the hour that I was born, the man I slew, and all the living
world!'

In a paroxysm of wrath, and terror, and the fear of death, he broke from
her, and rushed into the darkness of his cell, where he cast himself
jangling down upon the stone floor, and s