“Now, if you will tell me why you take so deep an interest in getting them fellows out of prison, I will grant the order of release,” Mr. Snivel says, and with an air of great gallantry leads her back to her chair.

“None but friendship for one who served me when he had it in his power.”

“I see!  I see!” interrupts our gallant justice; “the renewal of an old acquaintance; you are to play the part of Don Quixote,—­he, the mistress.  It’s well enough there should be a change in the knights, and that the stripling who goes about in the garb of the clergy, and has been puzzling his wits how to get Tom out of prison for the last six months—­”

“Your trades never agree;” parenthesises Anna.

“Should yield the lance to you.”

“Who better able to wield it in this chivalrous atmosphere?  It only pains my own feelings to confess myself an abandoned woman; but I have a consolation in knowing how powerful an abandoned woman may be in Charleston.”

An admonition from the old Judge, and Mr. Snivel draws his chair to the table, upon which he places his left elbow, rests his head on his hand.  “This fellow will get out; his mother-I have pledged my honor to keep him fast locked up-will find it out, and there’ll be a fuss among our first families,” he whispers.  Anna pledges him her honor, a thing she never betrays, that the secret of Tom’s release shall be a matter of strict confidence.  And having shook hands over it, Mr. Snivel seizes the pen and writes an order of release, commanding the jailer to set at liberty one Tom Swiggs, committed as a vagrant upon a justice’s warrant, &c., &c., &c.  “There,” says Justice Snivel, “the thing is done-now for a kiss;” and the fair girl permits him to kiss her brow.  “Me too; the bench and the bar!” rejoins the Judge, following the example of his junior.  And with an air of triumph the victorious girl bears away what at this moment she values a prize.

CHAPTER XVI.

In which Tom Swiggs gains his liberty, and what befalls him.

Anna gives George Mullholland the letter of release, and on the succeeding morning he is seen entering at the iron gate of the wall that encloses the old prison.  “Bread! give me bread,” greets his ear as soon as he enters the sombre old pile.  He walks through the debtors’ floor, startles as he hears the stifled cry for bread, and contemplates with pained feelings the wasting forms and sickly faces that everywhere meet his eye.  The same piercing cry grates upon his senses as he sallies along the damp, narrow aisle of the second floor, lined on both sides with small, filthy cells, in which are incarcerated men whose crime is that of having committed “assault and battery,” and British seamen innocent of all crime except that of having a colored skin.  If anything less than a gentleman commit assault and battery, we punish him with imprisonment; we have no law to punish gentlemen who commit such offences.