“Wimmen are as hard to live peaceable with as a hatful of hornets, but the’r brains works spryer even than the’r tongues; and they do think as much faster ’an a man, as a express train beats er eight ox-team.  Dyce is the safest sign-post!  If she was only here now, I couldn’t botch things, for she sees clare through a mill-stone, and she’d shove me the right way.  If I go a huntin’, I may flounder into a steel trap; if I stand still, wuss may happen.  Mars Lennox is too much for me.  I wouldn’t trust him no further ’n I would a fat possum.  I am afeard of his oily tongue.  He sot out to hang that poor young gal, and now he is willing to pay two hundred and fifty dollars to show the court he was a idjut and a slanderer!  I ain’t gwine to set down on no such spring gun as that!  Dyce ought to be here.  When Mars Lennox turns summersets in the court, before the judge, I don’t want to belong to his circus—­but, oh Lord!  If I could only find out which side he raily is on?”

CHAPTER XIII.

During the early stages of her convalescence, Beryl, though perfectly rational, asked no questions, made no reference to her gloomy surroundings and maintained a calm, but mournful taciturnity, very puzzling to Mrs. Singleton, who ascribed it at first to mental prostration, which rendered her comparatively obtuse; but ere long, a different solution presented itself, and she marvelled at the silence with which a desperate battle was fought.  With returning consciousness, the prisoner had grasped the grievous burden of her fate, unflinchingly lifted and bound it upon her shoulders; and though she reeled and bent under it, made no moan, indulged no regret, uttered no invective.

One cold dismal day, when not a rift was visible in the leaden sky, and a slanting gray veil of sleety rain darkened the air and pelted the dumb, shivering earth, Beryl sat on the side of her cot, with her feet resting on the round of a chair, and her hands clasped at the back of her head.  Her eyes remarkably large from the bluish circles illness had worn beneath them, were fixed in a strained, unwinking, far-away gaze upon the window, where black railing showed the outside world as through some grim St. Lawrence’s gridiron.

From time to time the warden’s wife glanced from her sewing toward the motionless figure, reluctant to obtrude upon her revery, yet equally loath to leave her a prey to melancholy musing.  After a while, she saw the black lashes quiver, and fall upon the waxen cheeks, then, as she watched, great tears glittered, rolled slowly, dripped softly, but there was no sigh, no sound of sobs.  Leaning closer, she laid her arm across the girl’s knee.

“What is it, dearie?  Tell me.”

There was no immediate reply; when Beryl spoke, her voice was calm, low and measured, as in one where all the springs of youth, hope, and energy are irreparably broken.

“Every Gethsemane has its strengthening Angels.  The agony of the Garden brought them to Christ.  I thank God, mine did not fail me.  If they had not come, I think I could never have borne this last misery that earth can inflict upon me.  My mother is dead.”