was for 'xample's sake.
These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he
just looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the
world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to
see him here, name of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for
an hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him very low;
bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was
as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get a-past me and
get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw him on the pallet.
Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord
help you! he fought like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin'
for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib
down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down
that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in there.
Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried
with him,--you remember?--she's only got three years. 'Complice. But
she's a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:
giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em,
bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays
awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That
woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,
for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here
she is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in."

He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the
cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of
the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle,
uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do.

"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will need a
crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."

Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.

"I think I'll get out," he said.

"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.

The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah
did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.

"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.

He looked up at her, "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a bright,
boyish smil