What followed was mere drifting circumstance,--a quicker walking over the path,--that was all.Do you want to hear the end of it?You wish me to make a tragic story out of it?Why,in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such tragedies:hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the high seas;hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow.
Commonplace enough the hints are,--jocose sometimes,done up in rhyme.
Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of,was reading to his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper:an unusual thing,--these police-reports not being,in general,choice reading for ladies;but it was only one item he read.
"Oh,my dear!You remember that man I told you of,that we saw at Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell?Here he is;just listen:--'Circuit Court.Judge Day.Hugh Wolfe,operative in Kirby &John's Loudon Mills.Charge,grand larceny.Sentence,nineteen years hard labor in penitentiary.
Scoundrel!Serves him right!After all our kindness that night!Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people,and then they began to talk of something else.
Nineteen years!How easy that was to read!What a simple word for Judge Day to utter!Nineteen years!Half a lifetime!
Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell,looking out.
His ankles Were ironed.Not usual in such cases;but he had made two desperate efforts to escape."Well,"as Haley,the jailer,said,"small blame to him!Nineteen years'inprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look forward to."Haley was very good-natured about it,though Wolfe had fought him savagely.
"When he was first caught,"the jailer said afterwards,in telling the story,"before the trial,the fellow was cut down at once,--laid there on that pallet like a dead man,with his hands over his eyes.Never saw a man so cut down in my life.Time of the trial,too,came the queerest dodge of any customer I ever had.Would choose no lawyer.Judge gave him one,of course.
Gibson it Was.He tried to prove the fellow crazy;but it wouldn't go.Thing was plain as daylight:money found on him.
'T was a hard sentence,--all the law allows;but it 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 smile,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,Idud!"
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!"
