But Isaac’s head rose and fell—­rose and fell rhythmically between his hands.  His breath came in low groans, like that of an animal smitten dead by a criminally heavy load.

“She sent her love before she passed away.  She wanted you to come back to the farm as soon as you could.  She believed in you, Ikey, even if you were in prison.  She said Paul was in prison, and that it was a terrible mistake.  She knew your father’s son would not depart from his God!”

As Abbie uttered this simple confession of country faith, the pitiful man lifted up his eyes from the tiled floor and looked at her gratefully.  His dry lips moved, and he tried to speak.

“Yes,” was all he said, with fierce humility.  Then the lack of breath choked him.

“She made me promise not to give you up, and to come and see you.  Of course you are innocent, Ikey?” Abbie did not look at him.

“Yes,” he answered mechanically.

“I know,” she said softly.

Of what use were more words?  They would only beat like waves against the granite of his broken heart.  The two sat silent for a time.  Then Abbie said, “I must go.”  She edged a little towards him, and touched his coat.

“When will you come out?  I will explain it all to the minister and the neighbors.  We will be married as soon as you come home.  She wanted us to!  Oh, Ikey!  Oh, Ikey!  My poor—­poor boy!”

Isaac arose unsteadily.  It was time for her to go, for the turnkey had nodded to him.

A fierce, mad indignation at his fate and what it had wrought upon his mother and upon his honorable name blinded him.  He did not even say good-by, but left the girl standing in the middle of the guard-room alone.  At any cost he must get back to his cell.  Supposing his mind should give way before he got there?  He staggered to the stairway.  He threw his hands up, and groped on the railing.  A blindness struck him before he had mounted two steps.  He did not hear a woman’s shriek, nor the rushing of feet, nor the sound of his own fall.

When he awaked, he was alone in the witness cell; and when he put his white hands to his hair, he felt that his head was shaven.  The chipper prison doctor told him that he was getting nicely over a brain fever.

* * * * *

It was three months after this before the case of Tom Muldoon came upon the docket.  The man whom the saloon-keeper had shot had but just been declared out of clanger and on the road to recovery.

When the case was called, the district attorney arose from his desk under the bench, and represented to the court that as for some unforeseen reason the said Frank Stevens, who had been maliciously and wilfully assaulted and shot by the said Tom Muldoon, had refused to prosecute, the prosecution rested upon the government, which would rely upon the direct evidence of one witness to sustain the case.

The district attorney, who was an unbought man, and whose future election depended upon the number of convictions he secured for the State, now opened his case with such decision, vigor, and masterful certainty that the policemen and other friends of the defendant began to quake for the boss of the—­th Ward.