CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE TEMPTER.

Albert was conveyed to St. Paul, but not until he had had one heart-breaking interview with his mother.  The poor woman had spent nearly an hour dressing herself to go to him, for she was so shaken with agitation and blinded with weeping, that she could hardly tie a ribbon or see that her breast-pin was in the right place.  This interview with her son shook her weak understanding to its foundations, and for days afterward Isa devoted her whole time to diverting her from the accumulation of troubled thoughts and memories that filled her with anguish—­an anguish against the weight of which her feeble nature could offer no supports.

When Albert was brought before the commissioner, he waived examination, and was committed to await the session of the district court.  Mr. Plausaby came up and offered to become his bail, but this Charlton vehemently refused, and was locked up in jail, where for the next two or three months he amused himself by reading the daily papers and such books as he could borrow, and writing on various subjects manuscripts which he never published.

The confinement chafed him.  His mother’s sorrow and feeble health oppressed him.  And despite all he could do, his own humiliation bowed his head a little.  But most of all, the utter neglect of Helen Minorkey hurt him sorely.  Except that she had sent, through Isabel Marlay, that little smuggled message that she was sorry for him—­like one who makes a great ado about sending you something which turns out to be nothing—­except this mockery of pity, he had no word or sign from Helen.  His mind dwelt on her as he remembered her in the moments when she had been carried out of herself by the contagion of his own enthusiasm, when she had seemed to love him devotedly.  Especially did he think of her as she sat in quiet and thoughtful enjoyment in the row-boat by the side of Katy, playfully splashing the water and seeming to rejoice in his society.  And now she had so easily accepted his guilt!

These thoughts robbed him of sleep, and the confinement and lack of exercise made him nervous.  The energetic spirit, arrested at the very instant of beginning cherished enterprises, and shut out from hope of ever undertaking them, preyed upon itself, and Albert had a morbid longing for the State’s prison, where he might weary himself with toil.

His counsel was Mr. Conger.  Mr. Conger was not a great jurist.  Of the philosophy of law he knew nothing.  For the sublime principles of equity and the great historic developments that underlie the conventions which enter into the administration of public justice, Mr. Conger cared nothing.  But there was one thing Mr. Conger did understand and care for, and that was success.  He was a man of medium hight, burly, active, ever in motion.  When he had ever been still long enough to read law, nobody knew.  He said everything he had to say with a