“Yes; I sent fifteen dollars.  I thought maybe I wouldn’t get to speak to him if she came out with him, and I wanted him to have the money, so I sent it to the paper, and asked them to see he got it.  I give it under three names:  I give my initials, and ‘Cash,’ and just my name—­ ‘Mary.’  I wanted him to know it was me give it.  I suppose they’ll send it all right.  Fifteen dollars don’t look like much against fifty-five dollars, does it?” She took a small roll of bills from her pocket and smiled down at them.  Her hands were bare, and Bronson saw that they were chapped and rough.  She rubbed them one over the other, and smiled at him wearily.

Bronson could not place her in the story he was about to write; it was a new and unlooked-for element, and one that promised to be of moment.  He took the roll of bills from his pocket and handed them to her.  “You might as well give him this too,” he said.  “I will be here until he comes out, and it makes no difference who gives him the money, so long as he gets it.”

The girl smiled confusedly.  The show of confidence seemed to please her.  But she said, “No, I’d rather not.  You see, it isn’t mine, and I did work for this,” holding out her own roll of money.  She looked up at him steadily, and paused for a moment, and then said, almost defiantly, “Do you know who I am?”

“I can guess,” Bronson said.

“Yes, I suppose you can,” the girl answered.  “Well, you can believe it or not, just as you please”—­as though he had accused her of something—­“but, before God, it wasn’t my doings.”  She pointed with a wave of her hand towards the prison wall.  “I did not know it was for me he helped them get the money until he said so on the stand.  I didn’t know he was thinking of running off with me at all.  I guess I’d have gone if he had asked me.  But I didn’t put him up to it as they said I’d done.  I knew he cared for me a lot, but I didn’t think he cared as much as that.  His wife”—­she stopped, and seemed to consider her words carefully, as if to be quite fair in what she said—­“his wife, I guess, didn’t know just how to treat him.  She was too fond of going out, and having company at the house, when he was away nights watching at the bank.  When they was first married she used to go down to the bank and sit up with him to keep him company; but it was lonesome there in the dark, and she give it up.  She was always fond of company and having men around.  Her and her mother are a good deal alike.  Henry used to grumble about it, and then she’d get mad, and that’s how it begun.  And then the neighbors talked too.  It was after that that he got to coming to see me.  I was living out in service then, and he used to stop in to see me on his way back from the bank, about seven in the morning, when I was up in the kitchen getting breakfast.  I’d give him a cup of coffee or something, and that’s how we got acquainted.”