Let us not draw the stranger’s portrait. If that were a pleasant task the clerk would not have watched him. What caught and kept that functionary’s eye was that, whatever else might be revealed by the stranger’s aspect, – weariness, sickness, hardship, pain, – the confession was written all over him, on his face, on his garb, from his hat’s crown to his shoe’s sole, Penniless! Penniless! Only when he had come quite up to the counter the clerk did not see him at all.
“Is Dr. Sevier in?”
“Gone out to dine,” said the clerk, looking over the inquirer’s head as if occupied with all the world’s affairs except the subject in hand.
“Do you know when he will be back?”
“Ten o’clock.”
The visitor repeated the hour murmurously and looked something dismayed. He tarried.
“Hem! – I will leave my card, if you please.”
The clerk shoved a little box of cards toward him, from which a pencil dangled by a string. The penniless wrote his name and handed it in. Then he moved away, went down the tortuous granite stair, and waited in the obscurity of the dimly lighted porch below. The card was to meet the contingency of the Doctor’s coming in by some other entrance. He would watch for him here.
By and by – he was very weary – he sat down on the stairs. But a porter, with a huge trunk on his back, told him very distinctly that he was in the way there, and he rose and stood aside. Soon he looked for another resting-place. He must get off of his feet somewhere, if only for a few moments. He moved back into the deep gloom of the stair-way shadow, and sank down upon the pavement. In a moment he was fast asleep.
He dreamed that he, too, was dining out. Laughter and merry-making were on every side. The dishes of steaming viands were grotesque in bulk. There were mountains of fruit and torrents of wine. Strange people of no identity spoke in senseless vaporings that passed for side-splitting wit, and friends whom he had not seen since childhood appeared in ludicrously altered forms and announced impossible events. Every one ate like a Cossack. One of the party, champing like a boar, pushed him angrily, and when he, eating like the rest, would have turned fiercely on the aggressor, he awoke.
A man standing over him struck him smartly with his foot.
“Get up out o’ this! Get up! get up!”
The sleeper bounded to his feet. The man who had waked him grasped him by the lapel of his coat.
“What do you mean?” exclaimed the awakened man, throwing the other off violently.
“I’ll show you!” replied the other, returning with a rush; but he was thrown off again, this time with a blow of the fist.
“You scoundrel!” cried the penniless man, in a rage; “if you touch me again I’ll kill you!”
They leaped together. The one who had proposed to show what he meant was knocked flat upon the stones. The crowd that had run into the porch made room for him to fall. A leather helmet rolled from his head, and the silver crescent of the police flashed on his breast. The police were not uniformed in those days.
But he is up in an instant and his adversary is down – backward, on his elbows. Then the penniless man is up again; they close and struggle, the night-watchman’s club falls across his enemy’s head blow upon blow, while the sufferer grasps him desperately, with both hands, by the throat. They tug, they snuffle, they reel to and fro in the yielding crowd; the blows grow fainter, fainter; the grip is terrible; when suddenly there is a violent rupture of the crowd, it closes again, and then there are two against one, and up sparkling St. Charles street, the street of all streets for flagrant, unmolested, well-dressed crime, moves a sight so exhilarating that a score of street lads follow behind and a dozen trip along in front with frequent backward glances: two officers of justice walking in grim silence abreast, and between them a limp, torn, hatless, bloody figure, partly walking, partly lifted, partly dragged, past the theatres, past the lawyers’ rookeries of Commercial place, the tenpin alleys, the chop-houses, the bunko shows, and shooting-galleries, on, across Poydras street into the dim openness beyond, where glimmer the lamps of Lafayette square and the white marble of the municipal hall, and just on the farther side of this, with a sudden wheel to the right into Hevia street, a few strides there, a turn to the left, stumbling across a stone step and wooden sill into a narrow, lighted hall, and turning and entering an apartment here again at the right. The door is shut; the name is written down; the charge is made: Vagrancy, assaulting an officer, resisting arrest. An inner door is opened.
“What have you got in number nine?” asks the captain in charge.
“Chuck full,” replies the turnkey.
“Well, number seven?” These were the numbers of cells.
“The rats’ll eat him up in number seven.”
“How about number ten?”
“Two drunk-and-disorderlies, one petty larceny, and one embezzlement and breach of trust.”
“Put him in there.”
And this explains what the watchman in Marais street could not understand, – why Mary Richling’s window shone all night long.
CHAPTER XXVII.
OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN
Round goes the wheel forever. Another sun rose up, not a moment hurried or belated by the myriads of life-and-death issues that cover the earth and wait in ecstasies of hope or dread the passage of time. Punctually at ten Justice-in-the-rough takes its seat in the Recorder’s Court, and a moment of silent preparation at the desks follows the loud announcement that its session has begun. The perky clerks and smirking pettifoggers move apart on tiptoe, those to their respective stations, these to their privileged seats facing the high dais. The lounging police slip down from their reclining attitudes on the heel-scraped and whittled window-sills. The hum of voices among the forlorn humanity that half fills the gradually rising, greasy benches behind, allotted to witnesses and prisoners’ friends, is hushed. In a little square, railed space, here at the left, the reporters tip their chairs against the hair-greased wall, and sharpen their pencils. A few tardy visitors, familiar with the place, tiptoe in through the grimy doors, ducking and winking, and softly lifting and placing their chairs, with a mock-timorous upward glance toward the long, ungainly personage who, under a faded and tattered crimson canopy, fills the august bench of magistracy with its high oaken back. On the right, behind a rude wooden paling that rises from the floor to the smoke-stained ceiling, are the peering, bloated faces of the night’s prisoners.
The recorder utters a name. The clerk down in front of him calls it aloud. A door in the palings opens, and one of the captives comes forth and stands before the rail. The arresting officer mounts to the witness-stand and confronts him. The oath is rattled and turned out like dice from a box, and the accusing testimony is heard. It may be that counsel rises and cross-examines, if there are witnesses for the defence. Strange and far-fetched questions, from beginners at the law or from old blunderers, provoke now laughter, and now the peremptory protestations of the court against the waste of time. Yet, in general, a few minutes suffices for the whole trial of a case.
“You are sure she picked the handsaw up by the handle, are you?” says the questioner, frowning with the importance of the point.
“Yes.”
“And that she coughed as she did so?”
“Well, you see, she kind o’” —
“Yes, or no!”
“No.”
“That’s all.” He waves the prisoner down with an air of mighty triumph, turns to the recorder, “trusts it is not necessary to,” etc., and the accused passes this way or that, according to the fate decreed, – discharged, sentenced to fine and imprisonment, or committed for trial before the courts of the State.
“Order in court!” There is too much talking. Another comes and stands before the rail, and goes his way. Another, and another; now a ragged boy, now a half-sobered crone, now a battered ruffian, and now a painted girl of the street, and at length one who starts when his name is called, as though something had exploded.
“John Richling!”
He came.
“Stand there!”
Some one is in the witness-stand, speaking. The prisoner partly hears, but does not see. He stands and holds the rail, with his eyes fixed vacantly on the clerk, who bends over his desk under the seat of justice, writing. The lawyers notice him. His dress has been laboriously genteel, but is torn and soiled. A detective, with small eyes set close together, and a nose like a yacht’s rudder, whisperingly calls the notice of one of these spectators who can see the prisoner’s face to the fact that, for all its thinness and bruises, it is not a bad one. All can see that the man’s hair is fine and waving where it is not matted with blood.
The testifying officer had moved as if to leave the witness-stand, when the recorder restrained him by a gesture, and, leaning forward and looking down upon the prisoner, asked: —
“Have you anything to say to this?”
The prisoner lifted his eyes, bowed affirmatively, and spoke in a low, timid tone. “May I say a few words to you privately?”
“No.”
He dropped his eyes, fumbled with the rail, and, looking up suddenly, said in a stronger voice, “I want somebody to go to my wife – in Prieur street. She is starving. This is the third day” —
“We’re not talking about that,” said the recorder. “Have you anything to say against this witness’s statement?”
The prisoner looked upon the floor and slowly shook his head. “I never meant to break the law. I never expected to stand here. It’s like an awful dream. Yesterday, at this time, I had no more idea of this – I didn’t think I was so near it. It’s like getting caught in machinery.” He looked up at the recorder again. “I’m so confused” – he frowned and drew his hand slowly across his brow – “I can hardly – put my words together. I was hunting for work. There is no man in this city who wants to earn an honest living more than I do.”
“What’s your trade?”
“I have none.”
“I supposed not. But you profess to have some occupation, I dare say. What’s your occupation?”
“Accountant.”
“Hum! you’re all accountants. How long have you been out of employment?”
“Six months.”
“Why did you go to sleep under those steps?”
“I didn’t intend to go to sleep. I was waiting for a friend to come in who boards at the St. Charles.”
A sudden laugh ran through the room. “Silence in court!” cried a deputy.
“Who is your friend?” asked the recorder.
The prisoner was silent.
“What is your friend’s name?”
Still the prisoner did not reply. One of the group of pettifoggers sitting behind him leaned forward, touched him on the shoulder, and murmured: “You’d better tell his name. It won’t hurt him, and it may help you.” The prisoner looked back at the man and shook his head.
“Did you strike this officer?” asked the recorder, touching the witness, who was resting on both elbows in the light arm-chair on the right.
The prisoner made a low response.
“I don’t hear you,” said the recorder.
“I struck him,” replied the prisoner; “I knocked him down.” The court officers below the dais smiled. “I woke and found him spurning me with his foot, and I resented it. I never expected to be a law-breaker. I” – He pressed his temples between his hands and was silent. The men of the law at his back exchanged glances of approval. The case was, to some extent, interesting.
“May it please the court,” said the man who had before addressed the prisoner over his shoulder, stepping out on the right and speaking very softly and graciously, “I ask that this man be discharged. His fault seems so much more to be accident than intention, and his suffering so much more than his fault” —
The recorder interrupted by a wave of the hand and a preconceived smile: “Why, according to the evidence, the prisoner was noisy and troublesome in his cell all night.”
“O sir,” exclaimed the prisoner, “I was thrown in with thieves and drunkards! It was unbearable in that hole. We were right on the damp and slimy bricks. The smell was dreadful. A woman in the cell opposite screamed the whole night. One of the men in the cell tried to take my coat from me, and I beat him!”
“It seems to me, your honor,” said the volunteer advocate, “the prisoner is still more sinned against than sinning. This is evidently his first offence, and” —
“Do you know even that?” asked the recorder.
“I do not believe his name can be found on any criminal record. I” —
The recorder interrupted once more. He leaned toward the prisoner.
“Did you ever go by any other name?”
The prisoner was dumb.
“Isn’t John Richling the only name you have ever gone by?” said his new friend: but the prisoner silently blushed to the roots of his hair and remained motionless.
“I think I shall have to send you to prison,” said the recorder, preparing to write. A low groan was the prisoner’s only response.
“May it please your honor,” began the lawyer, taking a step forward; but the recorder waved his pen impatiently.
“Why, the more is said the worse his case gets; he’s guilty of the offence charged, by his own confession.”
“I am guilty and not guilty,” said the prisoner slowly. “I never intended to be a criminal. I intended to be a good and useful member of society; but I’ve somehow got under its wheels. I’ve missed the whole secret of living.” He dropped his face into his hands. “O Mary, Mary! why are you my wife?” He beckoned to his counsel. “Come here; come here.” His manner was wild and nervous. “I want you – I want you to go to Prieur street, to my wife. You know – you know the place, don’t you? Prieur street. Ask for Mrs. Riley” —
“Richling,” said the lawyer.
“No, no! you ask for Mrs. Riley? Ask her – ask her – oh! where are my senses gone? Ask” —
“May it please the court,” said the lawyer, turning once more to the magistrate and drawing a limp handkerchief from the skirt of his dingy alpaca, with a reviving confidence, “I ask that the accused be discharged; he’s evidently insane.”
The prisoner looked rapidly from counsel to magistrate, and back again, saying, in a low voice, “Oh, no! not that! Oh, no! not that! not that!”
The recorder dropped his eyes upon a paper on the desk before him, and, beginning to write, said without looking up: —
“Parish Prison – to be examined for insanity.”
A cry of remonstrance broke so sharply from the prisoner that even the reporters in their corner checked their energetic streams of lead-pencil rhetoric and looked up.
“You cannot do that!” he exclaimed. “I am not insane! I’m not even confused now! It was only for a minute! I’m not even confused!”
An officer of the court laid his hand quickly and sternly upon his arm; but the recorder leaned forward and motioned him off. The prisoner darted a single flash of anger at the officer, and then met the eye of the justice.
“If I am a vagrant commit me for vagrancy! I expect no mercy here! I expect no justice! You punish me first, and try me afterward, and now you can punish me again; but you can’t do that!”
“Order in court! Sit down in those benches!” cried the deputies. The lawyers nodded darkly or blandly, each to each. The one who had volunteered his counsel wiped his bald Gothic brow. On the recorder’s lips an austere satire played as he said to the panting prisoner: —
“You are showing not only your sanity, but your contempt of court also.”
The prisoner’s eyes shot back a fierce light as he retorted: —
“I have no object in concealing either.”
The recorder answered with a quick, angry look; but, instantly restraining himself, dropped his glance upon his desk as before, began again to write, and said, with his eyes following his pen: —
“Parish Prison, for thirty days.”
The officer grasped the prisoner again and pointed him to the door in the palings whence he had come, and whither he now returned, without a word or note of distress.
Half an hour later the dark omnibus without windows, that went by the facetious name of the “Black Maria” received the convicted ones from the same street door by which they had been brought in out of the world the night before. The waifs and vagabonds of the town gleefully formed a line across the sidewalk from the station-house to the van, and counted with zest the abundant number of passengers that were ushered into it one by one. Heigh ho! In they went: all ages and sorts; both sexes; tried and untried, drunk and sober, new faces and old acquaintances; a man who had been counterfeiting, his wife who had been helping him, and their little girl of twelve, who had done nothing. Ho, ho! Bridget Fury! Ha, ha! Howling Lou! In they go: the passive, the violent, all kinds; filling the two benches against the sides, and then the standing room; crowding and packing, until the officer can shut the door only by throwing his weight against it.
“Officer,” said one, whose volunteer counsel had persuaded the reporters not to mention him by name in their thrilling account, – “officer,” said this one, trying to pause an instant before the door of the vehicle, “is there no other possible way to” —
“Get in! get in!”
Two hands spread against his back did the rest; the door clapped to like the lid of a bursting trunk, the padlock rattled: away they went!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“OH, WHERE IS MY LOVE?”
At the prison the scene is repeated in reverse, and the Black Maria presently rumbles away empty. In that building, whose exterior Narcisse found so picturesque, the vagrant at length finds food. In that question of food, by the way, another question arose, not as to any degree of criminality past or present, nor as to age, or sex, or race, or station; but as to the having or lacking fifty cents. “Four bits” a day was the open sesame to a department where one could have bedstead and ragged bedding and dirty mosquito-bar, a cell whose window looked down into the front street, food in variety, and a seat at table with the officers of the prison. But those who could not pay were conducted past all these delights, along one of several dark galleries, the turnkeys of which were themselves convicts, who, by a process of reasoning best understood among the harvesters of perquisites, were assumed to be undergoing sentence.
The vagrant stood at length before a grated iron gate while its bolts were thrown back and it growled on its hinges. What he saw within needs no minute description; it may be seen there still, any day: a large, flagged court, surrounded on three sides by two stories of cells with heavy, black, square doors all a-row and mostly open; about a hundred men sitting, lying, or lounging about in scanty rags, – some gaunt and feeble, some burly and alert, some scarred and maimed, some sallow, some red, some grizzled, some mere lads, some old and bowed, – the sentenced, the untried, men there for the first time, men who were oftener in than out, – burglars, smugglers, house-burners, highwaymen, wife-beaters, wharf-rats, common “drunks,” pickpockets, shop-lifters, stealers of bread, garroters, murderers, – in common equality and fraternity. In this resting and refreshing place for vice, this caucus for the projection of future crime, this ghastly burlesque of justice and the protection of society, there was a man who had been convicted of a dreadful murder a year or two before, and sentenced to twenty-one years’ labor in the State penitentiary. He had got his sentence commuted to confinement in this prison for twenty-one years of idleness. The captain of the prison had made him “captain of the yard.” Strength, ferocity, and a terrific record were the qualifications for this honorary office.
The gate opened. A howl of welcome came from those within, and the new batch, the vagrant among them, entered the yard. He passed, in his turn, to a tank of muddy water in this yard, washed away the soil and blood of the night, and so to the cell assigned him. He was lying face downward on its pavement, when a man with a cudgel ordered him to rise. The vagrant sprang to his feet and confronted the captain of the yard, a giant in breadth and stature, with no clothing but a ragged undershirt and pantaloons.
“Get a bucket and rag and scrub out this cell!”
He flourished his cudgel. The vagrant cast a quick glance at him, and answered quietly, but with burning face: —
“I’ll die first.”
A blow with the cudgel, a cry of rage, a clash together, a push, a sledge-hammer fist in the side, another on the head, a fall out into the yard, and the vagrant lay senseless on the flags.
When he opened his eyes again, and struggled to his feet, a gentle grasp was on his arm. Somebody was steadying him. He turned his eyes. Ah! who is this? A short, heavy, close-shaven man, with a woollen jacket thrown over one shoulder and its sleeves tied together in a knot under the other. He speaks in a low, kind tone: —
“Steady, Mr. Richling!”
Richling supported himself by a hand on the man’s arm, gazed in bewilderment at the gentle eyes that met his, and with a slow gesture of astonishment murmured, “Ristofalo!” and dropped his head.
The Italian had just entered the prison from another station-house. With his hand still on Richling’s shoulder, and Richling’s on his, he caught the eye of the captain of the yard, who was striding quietly up and down near by, and gave him a nod to indicate that he would soon adjust everything to that autocrat’s satisfaction. Richling, dazed and trembling, kept his eyes still on the ground, while Ristofalo moved with him slowly away from the squalid group that gazed after them. They went toward the Italian’s cell.
“Why are you in prison?” asked the vagrant, feebly.
“Oh, nothin’ much – witness in shootin’ scrape – talk ’bout aft’ while.”
“O Ristofalo,” groaned Richling, as they entered, “my wife! my wife! Send some bread to my wife!”
“Lie down,” said the Italian, pressing softly on his shoulders; but Richling as quietly resisted.
“She is near here, Ristofalo. You can send with the greatest ease! You can do anything, Ristofalo, – if you only choose!”
“Lay down,” said the Italian again, and pressed more heavily. The vagrant sank limply to the pavement, his companion quickly untying the jacket sleeves from under his own arms and wadding the garment under Richling’s head.
“Do you know what I’m in here for, Ristofalo?” moaned Richling.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Yo’ wife know you here?” Richling shook his head on the jacket. The Italian asked her address, and Richling gave it.
“Goin’ tell her come and see you,” said the Italian. “Now, you lay still little while; I be back t’rectly.” He went out into the yard again, pushing the heavy door after him till it stood only slightly ajar, sauntered easily around till he caught sight of the captain of the yard, and was presently standing before him in the same immovable way in which he had stood before Richling in Tchoupitoulas street, on the day he had borrowed the dollar. Those who idly drew around could not hear his words, but the “captain’s” answers were intentionally audible. He shook his head in rejection of a proposal. “No, nobody but the prisoner himself should scrub out the cell. No, the Italian should not do it for him. The prisoner’s refusal and resistance had settled that question. No, the knocking down had not balanced accounts at all. There was more scrubbing to be done. It was scrubbing day. Others might scrub the yard and the galleries, but he should scrub out the tank. And there were other things, and worse, – menial services of the lowest kind. He should do them when the time came, and the Italian would have to help him too. Never mind about the law or the terms of his sentence. Those counted for nothing there.” Such was the sense of the decrees; the words were such as may be guessed or left unguessed. The scrubbing of the cell must commence at once. The vagrant must make up his mind to suffer. “He had served on jury!” said the man in the undershirt, with a final flourish of his stick. “He’s got to pay dear for it.”
When Ristofalo returned to his cell, its inmate, after many upstartings from terrible dreams, that seemed to guard the threshold of slumber, had fallen asleep. The Italian touched him gently, but he roused with a wild start and stare.
“Ristofalo,” he said, and fell a-staring again.
“You had some sleep,” said the Italian.
“It’s worse than being awake,” said Richling. He passed his hands across his face. “Has my wife been here?”
“No. Haven’t sent yet. Must watch good chance. Git captain yard in good-humor first, or else do on sly.” The cunning Italian saw that anything looking like early extrication would bring new fury upon Richling. He knew all the values of time. “Come,” he added, “must scrub out cell now.” He ignored the heat that kindled in Richling’s eyes, and added, smiling, “You don’t do it, I got to do it.”
With a little more of the like kindly guile, and some wise and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had to stand in it with the water up to their knees, and rub its sides with brickbats. Richling fell down twice in the water, to the uproarious delight of the yard; but his companion helped him up, and they both agreed it was the sliminess of the tank’s bottom that was to blame.
“Soon we get through we goin’ to buy drink o’ whisky from jailer,” said Ristofalo; “he keep it for sale. Then, after that, kin hire somebody to go to your house; captain yard think we gittin’ mo’ whisky.”
“Hire?” said Richling. “I haven’t a cent in the world.”
“I got a little – few dimes,” rejoined the other.
“Then why are you here? Why are you in this part of the prison?”
“Oh, ’fraid to spend it. On’y got few dimes. Broke ag’in.”
Richling stopped still with astonishment, brickbat in hand. The Italian met his gaze with an illuminated smile. “Yes,” he said, “took all I had with me to bayou La Fourche. Coming back, slept with some men in boat. One git up in night-time and steal everything. Then was a big fight. Think that what fight was about – about dividing the money. Don’t know sure. One man git killed. Rest run into the swamp and prairie. Officer arrest me for witness. Couldn’t trust me to stay in the city.”
“Do you think the one who was killed was the thief?”
“Don’t know sure,” said the Italian, with the same sweet face, and falling to again with his brickbat, – “hope so!”
“Strange place to confine a witness!” said Richling, holding his hand to his bruised side and slowly straightening his back.
“Oh, yes, good place,” replied the other, scrubbing away; “git him, in short time, so he swear to anything.”
It was far on in the afternoon before the wary Ristofalo ventured to offer all he had in his pocket to a hanger-on of the prison office, to go first to Richling’s house, and then to an acquaintance of his own, with messages looking to the procuring of their release. The messenger chose to go first to Ristofalo’s friend, and afterward to Mrs. Riley’s. It was growing dark when he reached the latter place. Mary was out in the city somewhere, wandering about, aimless and distracted, in search of Richling. The messenger left word with Mrs. Riley. Richling had all along hoped that that good friend, doubtless acquainted with the most approved methods of finding a missing man, would direct Mary to the police station at the earliest practicable hour. But time had shown that she had not done so. No, indeed! Mrs. Riley counted herself too benevolently shrewd for that. While she had made Mary’s suspense of the night less frightful than it might have been, by surmises that Mr. Richling had found some form of night-work, – watching some pile of freight or some unfinished building, – she had come, secretly, to a different conviction, predicated on her own married experiences; and if Mr. Richling had, in a moment of gloom, tipped the bowl a little too high, as her dear lost husband, the best man that ever walked, had often done, and had been locked up at night to be let out in the morning, why, give him a chance! Let him invent his own little fault-hiding romance and come home with it. Mary was frantic. She could not be kept in; but Mrs. Riley, by prolonged effort, convinced her it was best not to call upon Dr. Sevier until she could be sure some disaster had actually occurred, and sent her among the fruiterers and oystermen in vain search for Raphael Ristofalo. Thus it was that the Doctor’s morning messenger to the Richlings, bearing word that if any one were sick he would call without delay, was met by Mrs. Riley only, and by the reassuring statement that both of them were out. The later messenger, from the two men in prison, brought back word of Mary’s absence from the house, of her physical welfare, and Mrs. Riley’s promise that Mary should visit the prison at the earliest hour possible. This would not be till the next morning.
While Mrs. Riley was sending this message, Mary, a great distance away, was emerging from the darkening and silent streets of the river front and moving with timid haste across the broad levee toward the edge of the water at the steam-boat landing. In this season of depleted streams and idle waiting, only an occasional boat lifted its lofty, black, double funnels against the sky here and there, leaving wide stretches of unoccupied wharf-front between. Mary hurried on, clear out to the great wharf’s edge, and looked forth upon the broad, softly moving harbor. The low waters spread out and away, to and around the opposite point, in wide surfaces of glassy purples and wrinkled bronze. Beauty, that joy forever, is sometimes a terror. Was the end of her search somewhere underneath that fearful glory? She clasped her hands, bent down with dry, staring eyes, then turned again and fled homeward. She swerved once toward Dr. Sevier’s quarters, but soon decided to see first if there were any tidings with Mrs. Riley, and so resumed her course. Night overtook her in streets where every footstep before or behind her made her tremble; but at length she crossed the threshold of Mrs. Riley’s little parlor. Mrs. Riley was standing in the door, and retreated a step or two backward as Mary entered with a look of wild inquiry.