had no share in it.  She was as cold, impervious to the suffering of others as nothing but a snake or a selfish woman can be:  whatever muddy human feeling did ooze from her brain was for this man only.  And yet, when we think of it, she was, as they guessed, a quadroon:  maybe, under the low, waxy-skinned forehead that Yarrow’s fingers were patting that night there might have been a revengeful consciousness of the wrongs of her race that justified to her the harm she did.  It is likely:  the coarsest negroes argue in that way.  God help them!  At any rate, we shall come closest to Christ’s rule of justice in trying to find a sore heart behind the vicious fingers of the woman.

While the two stood in the pleasant light of the warm room waiting for him, Stephen Yarrow came towards the house across the fields.  It was his shadow that his wife and Jem saw crossing Shag’s Hill.  He was a free man now,—­by virtue of his nickname, “quiet Stevy,” in part.  It startled him as much as the jailer, when his release was sent in a year before the time, “in consideration of his uniform good conduct.”  The truth was, that M. Soule took an interest in the poor wretch, and had said a few words in his favor to the Governor at a dinner-party the other evening, so the release was signed the next day.  Soule had called to see the man when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell.  The next morning he was free to go, but he had stayed a week longer, making a pair of red morocco shoes for the jailer’s little girl,—­idling over them:  when they were done, tying them on, himself, with a wonderful bow-knot, and looking anxiously in her clean Dutch face to see if she were pleased.

“Kiss the gentleman, Meg,” growled Ben.  “Where’s yer manners?”

Stephen drew back sharply.  The innocent baby! who lived out-of-doors!  Ben must have forgotten who he was:  a thief, belonging to this cell.  They were going to let him out; but what difference did that make?  His thin face grew wet with perspiration, as he walked away.  Why, his very fingers had felt too impure to him, as he tied on her shoes.  He went away an hour after, only nodding goodbye to Ben, looking down with an odd grin at the clothes he had asked the jailer to buy for him.  Ben had chosen a greenish coat and trousers and yellow waistcoat.  He did not shake hands with him.  Ben had been mixing hog-food, and the marks were on his fingers.  This was yesterday:  he was going now to meet his brother, as he requested.  Well, what else was there for him to do?

He did not look up often, as he plodded over the fields:  when he did, it hurt him somehow, this terrible wastefulness, this boundless unused air, and stretch of room.  It even pained hiss weakened eyes:  so long the oblong slip of clay running from the cell to the wall had been his share, and the yellow patch of sky and brick chimney-top beyond.  For so many thousands, too, no more.  But they were thieves, foul, like