Judge Dent stood close beside her, as he essayed these words of comfort, and saw that she caught her breath as though in mortal agony.  Her face writhed, and she shut her eyes, unable to contemplate some hideous apparition.  He suspected that she was fighting desperately an impulse that suggested succor; and he was sure she had strangled it, when her hands fell nerveless at her side, and she raised her bowed head.  If the finger of paralysis had passed over her features, they would not have appeared more hopelessly fixed.  Mechanically she twisted and coiled her hair, and took the hat and shawl which the officer held out to her.

“If I can assist you in any way, you have only to send for me.”

She looked at Judge Dent intently, for an instant, then shook her head.

“No one can help me now.”

She tied her veil over her face, and silently followed the deputy sheriff to a carriage, that stood near the pavement.

When he would have assisted her, she haughtily repelled him.

“I will follow you, because I must; but do not put your hands on me.”

CHAPTER VII.

In ante bellum days, when States’ Rights was a sacred faith, a revered and precious palladium, State pride blossomed under Southern skies, and State coffers overflowed with the abundance wherewith God blessed the land.  During that period, when it became necessary to select a site for a new Penitentiary, the salubrity and central location of X—–­had so strongly commended it, that the spacious structure was erected within its limits, and regarded as an architectural triumph of which the State might justly boast.  Soon after this had been completed, the old county jail, situated on the border of the town, was burned one windy March night; then the red rain of war deluged the land, and when the ghastly sun of “Reconstruction” smiled upon the grave of States’ Rights, Municipal money disappeared in subterranean channels.  Thus it came to pass, that with the exception of a small “lockup” attached to Police Headquarters, X—­had failed to rebuild its jail, and domiciled its dangerous transgressors in the great stone prison; paying therefor to the State an annual amount per capita.

Built of gray granite which darkened with time and weather stains, its massive walls, machicolated roof, and tall arched clock-tower lifted their leaden outlines against the sky, and cast a brooding shadow over the town, lying below; a grim perpetual menace to all who subsequently found themselves locked in its reformatory arms.  Separated from the bustling mart and busy traffic, by the winding river that divided the little city into North and South X—­, it crested an eminence on the north; and the single lower story flanking the main edifice east and west, resembled the trailing wings of some vast bird of prey, an exaggerated simulacrum of a monstrous gray condor perched on a “coigne of vantage,” waiting to swoop upon its victims.  Encircled by a tall brick wall, which was surmounted by iron spikes sharp as bayonets, that defied escalade, the grounds extended to the verge of the swift stream in front, and stretched back to the border of a heavily timbered tract of pine land, a bit of primeval forest left to stare at the encroaching armies of Philistinism.