“’By a resolution of the Board of Commissioners of this City, I have been instructed to communicate with your honorable body in relation to the insane paupers now in Poor-house’, (the insane in a poorhouse!) ’and to request that you will adopt the necessary provision for sending them to the Lunatic Asylum at Columbia.

* * * *

There are twelve on the list, many of whom, it is feared, have already remained too long in an institution quite unsuited to their unfortunate situation.

“’With great respect, your very obedient servant,

“’(Signed) Wm. M. Lawton, “‘Chairman of the Board of Commissioners.’”

“How long,” inquires Madame Montford, who has been questioning within herself whether any act of her life could have brought a human being into such a place, “has she been confined here?” Mr. Glentworthy says she tells her own tale.

“Five years,—­five years,—­five long, long years, I have waited for him in the dark, but he won’t come,” she lisps in a faltering voice, as her emotions overwhelm her.  Then crouching back upon the floor, she supports her head pensively in her left hand, her elbow resting on her knee, and her right hand poised against the brick wall.  “Pencele!” says Mr. Glentworthy, for such is the wretched woman’s name, “cannot you sing a song for your friends?” Turning aside to Madame Montford, he adds, “she sings nicely.  We shall soon get her out of the way-can’t last much longer.”  Mr. Glentworthy, drawing a small bottle from his pocket, places it to his lips, saying he stole it from old Saddlerock, and gulps down a portion of the contents.  His breath is already redolent of whiskey.  “Oh, yes, yes, yes!  I can sing for them, I can smother them with kisses.  Good faces seldom look in here, seldom look in here,” she rises to her feet, and extends her bony hand, as the tears steal down Madame Montford’s cheeks.  Tom stands speechless.  He wishes he had power to redress the wrongs of this suffering maniac-his very soul fires up against the coldness and apathy of a people who permit such outrages against humanity.  “There!—­he comes! he comes! he comes!” the maniac speaks, with faltering voice, then strikes up a plaintive air, which she sings with a voice of much sweetness, to these words:  When you find him, speed him to me, And this heart will cease its bleeding, &c.

The history of all this poor maniac’s sufferings is told in a few simple words that fall incautiously from Mr. Glentworthy’s lips:  “Poor fool, she had only been married a couple of weeks, when they sold her husband down South.  She thinks if she keeps mad, he’ll come back.”

There was something touching, something melancholy in the music of her song, as its strains verberated and reverberated through the dread vault, then, like the echo of a lover’s lute on some Alpine hill, died softly away.

CHAPTER XXXIII.