r the accommodation of the drivers. Water
for beasts--gentlemen could meantime find something less "beastly" than
ice-water in the little low-ceiled bar-room on the other side of the
road. The deputy-marshal wanted to stretch his legs a little, and so,
trusting partly to his knowledge of Charlton's character, partly to
handcuffs, and partly to his convenient revolver, he leaped out of the
coach and stepped to the door of the bar-room just to straighten his
legs, you know, and get a glass of whisky "straight" at the same time. In
getting into the coach again he chanced to throw back the buffalo-robe
and thus exposed Charlton's handcuffs. Helen glanced at them, and then at
Albert's face. She shivered a little, and grew red. There was no
alternative but to ride thus face to face with Charlton for six miles.
She tried to feel herself an injured person, but something in the
self-possessed face of Albert--his comforter had dropped down now--awed
her, and she affected to be sick, leaning her head on her father's
shoulder and surprising that gentleman beyond measure. Helen had never
shown so much emotion of any sort in her life before, certainly never so
much confusion and shame. And that in spite of her reasoning that it was
not she but Albert who should be embarrassed. But the two seemed to have
changed places. Charlton was as cold and immovable as Helen Minorkey ever
had been; she trembled and shuddered, even with her eyes shut, to think
that his eyes were on her--looking her through and through--measuring all
the petty meanness and shallowness of her soul. She complained of the
cold and wrapped her blanket shawl about her face and pretended to be
asleep, but the shameful nakedness of her spirit seemed not a whit less
visible to the cool, indifferent eyes that she felt must be still looking
at her from under the shadow of that cap-front. What a relief it was at
last to get into the warm parlor of the hotel! But still she shivered
when she thought of her ride.

It is one thing to go into a warm parlor of a hotel, to order your room,
your fire, your dinner, your bed. It is quite another to drive up under
the high, rough limestone outer wall of a prison--a wall on which moss
and creeper refuse to grow--to be led handcuffed into a little office, to
have your credentials for ten years of servitude presented to the warden,
to have your name, age, nativity, hight, complexion, weight, and
distinguishing marks carefully booked, to hav