e, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
sobbed and cried out loud.

"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think
I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I dud!"

The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
the sharp cry.

He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with
the bit of tin.

Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,
that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,
or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,
she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught
his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.

"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that! for
God's sake, not that!"

The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered
word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough.
Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of
tears, but did not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now
and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a
momentary sting.

It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on
the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded.
He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed
hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,
and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more
than anything else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to
him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How
they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that pavement
again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with
a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was married the other week. He
whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff
remembered he was there,--if any of the boys thought of h