The Legacy of Cain | Page 8

to say--could
have spoken to the doomed mother?
"I am sorry to have allowed this to go on," I said. "In justice to yourself,
sir, don't answer!"
She turned on me with a look of fury.
"He shall answer," she cried.
I saw, or thought I saw, signs of yielding in his face. "Take time," I
persisted--"take time to consider before you decide."
She stepped up to me.
"Take time?" she repeated. "Are you inhuman enough to talk of time, in
my presence?"
She laid the sleeping child on her bed, and fell on her knees before the
Minister: "I promise to hear your exhortations--I promise to do all a
woman can to believe and repent. Oh, I know myself! My heart, once
hardened, is a heart that no human creature can touch. The one way to
my better nature--if I have a better nature--is through that poor babe.
Save her from the workhouse! Don't let them make a pauper of her!"
She sank prostrate at his feet, and beat her hands in frenzy on the floor.
"You want to save my guilty soul," she reminded him furiously.
"There's but one way of doing it. Save my child!"
He raised her. Her fierce tearless eyes questioned his face in a mute
expectation dreadful to see. Suddenly, a foretaste of death--the death
that was so near now!--struck her with a shivering fit: her head dropped
on the Minister's shoulder. Other men might have shrunk from the
contact of it. That true Christian let it rest.

Under the maddening sting of suspense, her sinking energies rallied for
an instant. In a whisper, she was just able to put the supreme question
to him.
"Yes? or No?"
He answered: "Yes."
A faint breath of relief, just audible in the silence, told me that she had
heard him. It was her last effort. He laid her, insensible, on the bed, by
the side of her sleeping child. "Look at them," was all he said to me;
"how could I refuse?"
CHAPTER V.
MISS CHANCE ASSERTS HERSELF.
The services of our medical officer were required, in order to hasten the
recovery of the Prisoner's senses.
When the Doctor and I left the cell together, she was composed, and
ready (in the performance of her promise) to listen to the exhortations
of the Minister. The sleeping child was left undisturbed, by the
mother's desire. If the Minister felt tempted to regret what he had done,
there was the artless influence which would check him! As we stepped
into the corridor, I gave the female warder her instructions to remain on
the watch, and to return to her post when she saw the Minister come
out.
In the meantime, my companion had walked on a little way.
Possessed of ability and experience within the limits of his profession,
he was in other respects a man with a crotchety mind; bold to the verge
of recklessness in the expression of his opinion; and possessed of a
command of language that carried everything before it. Let me add that
he was just and merciful in his intercourse with others, and I shall have
summed him up fairly enough. When I joined him he seemed to be
absorbed in reflection.

"Thinking of the Prisoner?" I said.
"Thinking of what is going on, at this moment, in the condemned cell,"
he answered, "and wondering if any good will come of it."
I was not without hope of a good result, and I said so.
The Doctor disagreed with me. "I don't believe in that woman's
penitence," he remarked; "and I look upon the parson as a poor weak
creature. What is to become of the child?"
There was no reason for concealing from one of my colleagues the
benevolent decision, on the part of the good Minister, of which I had
been a witness. The Doctor listened to me with the first appearance of
downright astonishment that I had ever observed in his face. When I
had done, he made an extraordinary reply:
"Governor, I retract what I said of the parson just now. He is one of the
boldest men that ever stepped into a pulpit."
Was the doctor in earnest? Strongly in earnest; there could be no doubt
of it. Before I could ask him what he meant, he was called away to a
patient on the other side of the prison. When we parted at the door of
my room, I made it a request that my medical friend would return to me
and explain what he had just said.
"Considering that you are the governor of a prison," he replied, "you
are a singularly rash man. If I come back, how do you know I shall not
bore you?"
"My rashness runs the risk of that," I rejoined.
"Tell