It needed but a glance to assure Hugh that he stood in the presence of the man who with strangely winning powers had tempted him to sin—­the villain who had planned poor Adah’s marriage—­Monroe, her guardian, whose sudden disappearance had been so mysterious.  Hugh never knew how he controlled himself from leaping into that walk and compelling the bold wretch to tell if he knew aught of the base deserter, Willie Hastings’ father.  He did, indeed, take one forward step while his fist clinched involuntarily, but the next moment fell powerless at his side as a low wail of pain reached his ear and he turned in time to save his fainting mother from falling to the floor.

She, too, had seen the ropemaker, glancing at him twice ere sure she saw aright, and then, as if a corpse buried years ago had arisen to her view, the blood curdled about her heart which after one mighty throe lay heavy and still as lead.  He was not dead; that paragraph in the paper telling her so was false; he did not die, such as he could not die; he was alive—­alive—­a convict within those prison walls; a living, breathing man with that same look she remembered so well, shuddering as she remembered it, ’Lina’s father and her own husband!

“It was the heat, or the smell, or the parting with Adah, or something,” she said, when she came back to consciousness, eagerly scanning Hugh’s face to see if he knew too, and then glancing timidly around as if in quest of the phantom which had so affected her.

“Let’s go home, I’m sorry I came to Frankfort,” she whispered, while her teeth chattered and her eyes wore a look of terror for which Hugh could not account.

He never thought of associating her illness with the man who had so affected himself.  It was overexertion, he said.  His mother could not bear much, and with all the tenderness of an affectionate son he wrapped her shawl about her and led her gantry from the spot which held for her so great a terror.  It was not physical fear; she had never been afraid of bodily harm, even when fully in his power.  It was rather the olden horror stealing back upon her, the pain which comes from the slow grinding out of one’s entire will and spirit.  She had forgotten the feeling, it was so long since it had been experienced, but one sight of him brought it back, and all the way from Frankfort to Spring Bank she lay upon Hugh’s shoulder quiet, but sick and faint, with a shrinking from what the future might possibly have in store for her.

In this state of mind she reached Spring Bank, where by some strange coincidence, if coincidence it can be called, old Densie Densmore was the first to greet her, asking, with much concern, what was the matter.  It was a rare thing for Densie to be at all demonstrative, but in the suffering expression of Mrs. Worthington’s face she recognized something familiar, and attached herself at once to the weak, nervous woman, who sought her bed, and burying her face in the pillow cried herself to sleep, while Densie, like some white-haired ghost, sat watching her silently.