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 have your hair cropped to half the length of a prize-fighter’s, to lay aside the dress which you have chosen and which seems half your individuality, and put on a suit of cheerless penitentiary uniform—­to cease to be a man with a place among men, and to become simply a convict.  This is not nearly so agreeable as living at the hotel.  Did Helen Minorkey ever think of the difference?