. The Widow
sat down with her work as before, and this time she began to talk about
the weather, trusting that on this subject at least, her great good
friend could open his lips and speak.

"How very cold it is this evening. The chill of the snow is in the air;
it blows down from the banks of snow on the mountain, and I fancy it
may be cold here in this rickety cabin the Summer through."

Still the ugly convict, that now began to grow black in the face, swung
and twisted at his side; but he did not speak.

"Do you not feel cold?"

"Yes 'um."

The two words came out like the bark of a bull-dog; as if one of the
brutes he had drawn back under his bench had stuck out his nose and
yelped in the face of the Widow, and Sandy was frightened nearly to
death. The perspiration dropped from his brow to his hand, and he knew
that things could not last in this way much longer. The bull-dogs would
be out, and he knew it. The dead man that he was sitting down upon would
rise up to judgment, and the felon at his side was only swinging and
turning and twisting more than before.

Sandy shut his eyes and attempted to rise. His gum boots screeched, the
bench creaked as he began to undouble himself. It turned up and hung on
behind him as if it had been a lobster. He shook it off, and began to
tower up like a pine. He feared he would pierce through the roof, and
began to look out through the half-open door, and to stretch out the
prostrate hand. Then he stood still and was more bewildered than before.
The Widow was looking straight at him, and expecting him to speak. He
wished he had not got up at all. If he was only back on that overthrown
bench, with the dead man beneath him, and the bull-dogs below, and the
felon swinging loosely at his side, how happy he would be. He tried to
speak, tried like a man, but if it had been to save his life, to save
her life, the world, he could not find will to shape one word. He backed
and blundered and stumbled across the threshold and drew a breath, such
a breath! the first he had drawn for half an hour, as he stood outside,
with the Widow's little feet following to the threshold, and her pretty
miniature face looking up to his as if looking up to the top of a pine.

"You will come again, will you not? you have been so very kind; please
to call, step in as you pass, and rest. It is so lonesome here, you
know! nobody that anybody knows. And then you are such good company."

And then the pretty li