“So tired, Dulce?  You can’t be hungry; you must want your nap.  There don’t fret, baby girl.  I will take you directly.”

She stepped down, turned the side of the blackboard that contained the sketch to the wall; lowered the sash which she had raised to admit fresh air, and lifted the child from the floor.  Approaching the figure who sat motionless as a statue of woe, she laid a hand on the drooping shoulder.

“Shall I help you down the steps?”

“No, I’ll stay here a while.  This is the only place where I can get courage enough to pray.  Couldn’t you leave her—­the child—­with me?  It has been years since I could bear the sight of one.  I hated children, because my heart was so black—­so bitter; but now, I yearn toward this little thing.  I am so starved for the kiss of—­of—­,” she swept her hand across her throat, where a sob stifled her.

“Certainly, if she will stay contentedly.  See whether she will come to you.”

At sight of the extended arms, the baby shrank closer to Beryl, nestled her head under the girl’s chin, and put up her lower lip in ominous protest.  With an indescribably mournful gesture of surrender, the childless mother sank back in the corner of the bench.

“I don’t wonder she is afraid; she knows—­everybody, everything knows I killed my baby—­my own boy, who slept for nearly four years on my heart—­oh!—­”

“Hush—­she was frightened by your crying.  She is sleepy now, but when she has had her nap, and wakes good-humored, I will fill her bottle, and bring her down to you.  Try not to torment yourself by dwelling upon a distressing past, which you cannot undo; but by prayer anchor your soul in God’s pardoning mercy.  When all the world hoots and stones us, God is our ’sure refuge’.”

“That promise is to pure hearts and innocent hands; not to such as I am, steeped to the lips in crime—­black, black—­”

“No.  One said:  ’The whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.’  Your soul is sick unto death; claim the pledged cure.  Yonder I have copied the hymn for to-morrow’s lesson.  While you sit here, commit it to memory; and the Shepherd will hear your cry.”

Glancing back from the chapel door, she saw that the miserable woman had bowed her face in her hands, and with elbows supported on her knees, was swaying back and forth in a storm of passionate sobs.

“O! my beautiful baby, my angel Max, pray for mother now.  Max—­Max—­ there is no ’Sweet By and By’—­for mother—­”

Hurrying from the wail of anguish that no human agency could lighten, Beryl carried the orphan across the yard, and up the stairs leading to the corridor, whence she was allowed egress at will.  She noticed casually, signs of suppressed excitement among some of the convicts, who were lounging in groups, enjoying the half holiday, and three or four men stood around the under-warden who was gesticulating vivaciously; but at her approach he lowered his voice, and she lived so far aloof from the jars and gossip of the lower human strata, that the suspicious indications failed to arouse any curiosity.