as possible for her to
give, or seemed to be worth her giving, the death of his aunt and the
thought of his loneliness, had combined to make her nervously
apprehensive. As soon as she had settled down under the shadow of the
prison walls, the idea took hold of her with unaccountable force that
the life of Alan was hanging by a thread, and the news of his death came
to her only as the full confirmation of her fears.

But, as it happened, there was another man in the prison named Walters,
who had been convicted of an assault upon his wife some time previously,
and had been ill for many months of an internal complaint which was
certain, sooner or later, to end fatally.

A sleepless night brought Lettice no ray of hope, and it was with a
heavy and despairing heart that she went to the governor's residence
next morning, and sent up to him the note which she had written before
leaving her room.

Captain Haynes remembered her former visit, and being disengaged at the
moment, he came down at once.

"My dear lady," he said, bustling into the room, "what is the meaning of
this letter? What makes you talk of burying your friend? He has been in
this tomb of stone long enough to purge him of all his offenses, and I
am sure you don't want to bury him alive again!"

Lettice started to her feet, gazed at the speaker with straining eyes,
and pressed her hands upon her tumultuous heart.

"Is--he--alive?" she gasped, in scarcely audible words.

"Of course he is alive! I told you when you were here before that he was
out of danger. All he wants now is careful nursing and cheerful company;
and I must say that you don't quite look as if you could give him
either."

"Alive--alive! Thank God!"

A great wave of tenderness swept through her heart, and gushed from her
eyes in tears that were eloquent of happiness.

"I was told that he was dead!" She looked at the governor with a smile
which disarmed his bluff tongue.

"I am on the borderland of a romance," he thought, "and a romance of
which the ending will be pleasanter than the beginning, unless I am much
mistaken. This is not the wife; it is the woman he was writing his
verses to before he took the fever. The doctor says she has written the
best novel of the year. Novels and poetry--umph! not much in my line."

Then aloud, "you are under a mistake. A man named Walters died
yesterday; perhaps that is how you have been misled. Some rumor of his
death must have got abroad. Mr. Walc