Mr. Singleton discreetly withdrew from the conference, softly closing the door behind him; and Doctor Moffat bent over the thermometer with which he was testing the temperature.  When he raised his head, a kindly smile lurked in his deep set eyes: 

“I can’t afford to quarrel with you, madam; you are too faithful and watchful a nurse.  After all, the chances are, that it will ultimately make very little difference; she grows worse so rapidly.  I will come in again before bed-time, and meanwhile make no change in the medicine.”

The warden’s wife replenished the ice in a bowl, whence a tube supplied the cap or bag on the head of the sufferer, and taking a child’s apron from her work-basket on the floor, resumed her sewing.  After a while, the door opened noiselessly, and glancing up, she saw Mr. Dunbar.

“May I come in?”

“Yes.  You need repentance; and this is a good place to begin.”

“Is there any change?”

“Only for the worse.  No need now to tip-toe; she is beyond being disturbed by noise.  I think the first sound she will notice, will be the harps of the angels.”

“I trust the case is not so hopeless?”

“Queer heart you must have!  You are afraid she will slip through your fingers, and get to heaven without the help of the gallows and the black cap?  Death cheats even the lawyers, sometimes, and seems to be snatching at your prey.  You don’t believe in prayer, and you have no time to waste that way.  I do; and I get down here constantly on my knees, and pray to my God to take this poor young thing out of the world now, before you all convict her, and punish her for crimes she never committed.”

“Madam, her conviction would grieve me as much as it possibly could you; and unless she can vindicate herself, I earnestly hope she may never recover her consciousness.”

The unmistakable sincerity of his tone surprised the little woman, and scanning him keenly as he stood, hat in hand, at the foot of the cot, her heart relented toward him.

“You still consider her guilty?”

“Since my last interview with her, I have arrived at no conclusion. 
Whether she be innocent or guilty, is known only by her, and her
God.  All human judgments in such cases are but guesses at the truth. 
Is she entirely unconscious, or has she lucid intervals?”

“Mr. Dunbar, on your honor as a gentleman, answer me.  Are you here hunting evidence on a death-bed?  Would you be so diabolical as to use against her any utterances of delirium?” The flash of his eyes reminded her of the peculiar blue flame that leaps from a glowing bed of anthracite coal; and she had her reply before his lips moved.

“Am I a butcher, madam?  Your insinuations are so insulting to my manhood, that it is difficult for me to remember my interrogator is a lady; doubly difficult for me to show you the courtesy your sex demands.  Sooner than betray the secrets of a sick room, or violate the sanctity of the confidence which that poor girl’s condition enjoins, I would cut off my right arm.”