“Hold, sir,” she cried with indignation, as she fixed upon him a look even more penetrating than that he so well remembered.  “I have nothing to retract—­nothing to be ashamed of.  I came here out of pure sympathy, to make amends to one who has fallen for a prayer which burst from me in my anger.  Your friend, who called for me, told me that you were a prisoner, and that your imprisonment was the consequence of the wager which it fell to me to decide.  I did not come to repeat to you what I said before, that I am not the mother of the boy, but to make an explanation.”

“And I have one to ask,” said he.

“I am ready to answer.”

“How could I be deceived?” said he.  “I heard the boy address you as his mother.”

“And that is what I came to explain.  I have taxed my memory since Mr. Campbell insisted, in my presence, that Frederick did address me in the manner you have stated.  Shall I tell you the precise words he used?”

“I wait for them.”

“Well, they were, ‘See ma.’”

“The very words; and were they not enough for proof and belief?”

“Yes, sir; but there are words which have two significations.  Ma’ is the contraction, as you know, for mamma, but it is pronounced the same as maw, which is a word which we use to designate those birds otherwise called gulls.  I recollect that while I was unable to bear the sight of the tortured bird, and had turned my head in another direction, my nephew kept looking over the rails, and that, as he saw the struggling creature, he cried out to me the words you misconstrued.  And thus the mystery is cleared up.”

“Miserable and fatal error,” he gasped out, as he staggered back.  “And the connection!—­the connection!  There was retribution in those diamond eyes.”

“What mean you, sir?”

“The bird’s eyes that haunt me in my reveries, and enter into the sockets of my dream-beings!”

“Are you mad?”

“No; or the heavens are mad, with their swirling orbs and blazing comets, that rush sighing through space before some terrible power that will give them no respite, except with the condition that when they rest they die.”

“Poor youth! so early doomed; I pity you.”

“Ay, pity those who have no pity—­those are the truly wretched; for pity, in the world’s life, is the soul of reason’s action.  Ah, madam, it is those who have pity who do not need the pity of others, for they are generally free from the faults that produce the unhappiness that needs pity.”

“But you have been punished, I admit, in a very strange and mysterious way; for the word used by the boy was the joining link of the two transactions, and you were led to misconstrue it—­ay, and to take advantage of your misconstruction to get the better of your friend.”

“I see it all.”

“But I say you have been punished,” continued she, consolingly; “and I perceive you are penitent—­perhaps justice is satisfied; and when you are liberated, you may be the better for the lesson.  I shall now reverse my prayer, and say to one I shall perhaps never see again, May God deal mercifully by you.”