for it utterly upsets your nerves, and makes your brain whirl like a top.  For three days and nights you have not tasted food:  now just to please me, since I have taken so much trouble, sit down here by me, and eat what I have brought.  I know you would rather not; I know you don’t want it; but, my dear child, take it like any other dose, which will strengthen you for your battle.  It is very fine to rant about heroism, but starvation is the best factory for turning out cowards:  and even the courage of old Caesar would have had the ‘dwindles,’ if he had been stinted in his rations.”

She removed the napkin, and displayed a tempting luncheon, served in pretty, gilt-banded white china.  What a contrast it presented, to the steaming tin platter and dull tin quart cups carried daily to the adjoining cell?

Beryl laid her hand on Mrs. Singleton’s shoulder, and her mouth trembled.

“I thank you, sincerely, for your sympathy—­and for your confidence; and to show my appreciation of your kindness, I wish I could eat that dainty luncheon; but I think it would strangle me—­I have such a ceaseless aching here, in my throat.  I feel as if I should stifle.”

“See here!  I brought you some sweet rich milk in my little boy’s cup.  He was my first-born, and I lost him.  This was his christening present from my mother.  It is very precious, very sacred to me.  If you will only drink what is in it, I shall be satisfied.  Don’t slight my angel baby’s cup.  That would hurt me.”

She raised the pretty “Bo-Peep” silver cup to the prisoner’s lips, and seeing the kind hazel eyes swimming in tears, Beryl stooped her head and drank the milk.

The warden’s wife lifted the cup, looked wistfully at it, and kissed the name engraved on the metal: 

“You know now I must think you pure and worthy.  I have given you the strongest possible proof; for only the good could be allowed to touch what my dead boy’s lips have consecrated.  Now come out with me, and get some pure fresh air.”

Beryl shrank back.

“These close walls seem a friendly shelter from the horrible faces that cluster outside.  You can form no idea how I dread contact with the vile creatures, whose crimes have brought them here for expiation.  The thought of breathing the same atmosphere pollutes me.  I think the loathsomeness of perdition must consist in association with the depraved and wicked.  Not the undying flames would affright me, but the doom of eternal companionship with outcast criminals.  No!  No!  I would sooner freeze here, than wander in the sunshine with those hideous wretches I saw the day I was thrust among them.”

“Trust me, and I will expose you to nothing unpleasant.  Take your hat and shawl; I shall not bring you back here.  There is time enough for cells when you have been convicted and sentenced; and please God, you shall never stay in this one again.  Come.”

“Stay, madam.  What is your purpose?  I have been so hunted down, I am growing suspicious of the appearance of kindness.  What are you going to do?”