“How fare ye, this mornin’?” inquired Jim, with a voice full of kindness.

“I’m just on the verge of eternity,” replied the woman.

“Don’t ye be so sure o’ that, now,” responded Jim.  “Ye’re good for ten year yit.”

“No,” said the woman, “I shall die in a minute.”

“Does she mean that?” inquired Jim, turning to the Doctor.

“Yes, and she has been just on the verge of eternity for fifteen years,” replied the Doctor, coolly.  “That’s rather an interesting case, too.  I’ve given it a good deal of study.  It’s hopeless, of course, but it’s a marked case, and full of suggestion to a scientific man.”

“Isn’t it a pity,” responded Jim, “that she isn’t a scientific man herself?  It might amuse her, you know.”

The Doctor laughed, and led him on to the next cell, and here he found the most wretched creature he had ever seen.  He greeted her as he had greeted the others, and she looked up to him with surprise, raised herself from the straw, and said: 

“You speak like a Christian.”

The tears came into Jim’s eyes, for he saw in that little sentence, the cruelty of the treatment she had received.

“Well, I ain’t no Christian, as I knows on,” he responded, “an’ I don’t think they’re very plenty in these parts; but I’m right sorry for ye.  You look as if you might be a good sort of a woman.”

“I should have been if it hadn’t been for the pigeons,” said the woman.  “They flew over a whole day, in flocks, and flocks, and cursed the world.  All the people have got the plague, and they don’t know it.  My children all died of it, and went to hell.  Everybody is going to hell, and nothing can save them.  Old Buffum’ll go first.  Robert Belcher’ll go next.  Dr. Radcliffe will go next.”

“Look here, old woman, ye jest leave me out of that calkerlation,” said Jim.

“Will you have the kindness to kill me, sir?” said the woman.

“I really can’t, this mornin’,” he replied, “for I’ve got a good ways to tramp to-day; but if I ever want to kill anybody I’ll come round, p’r’aps, and ’commodate ye.”

“Thank you,” she responded heartily.

The Doctor turned to Jim, and said: 

“Do you see that hole in the wall, beyond her head?  Well, that hole was made by Mr. Buffum.  She had begged him to kill her so often that he thought he would put her to the test, and he agreed he would do so.  So he set her up by that wall, and took a heavy stick from the wood-pile, raised it as high as the room would permit, and then brought it down with great violence, burying the end of the bludgeon in the plastering.  I suppose he came within three inches of her head, and she never winked.  It was a very interesting experiment, as it illustrated the genuineness of her desire for death Otherwise the case is much like many others.”

“Very interestin’,” responded Jim, “very!  Didn’t you never think of makin’ her so easy and comfortable that she wouldn’t want any body to kill her?  I sh’d think that would be an interestin’ experiment.”