at the file. An
ugly job, I call it; but it was a very pretty case, the lawyers said, as
to whether murder had been done or not."

"But did this Jeffreys get off?"

"Upon the trial--yes; but not from the prison. He got into the yard all
right, and climbed the wall by making steps of the file and the nail;
but, in dropping on the other side, he broke his leg, and so they nabbed
him. It's a very hard nut to crack, is Lingmoor, _I_ can tell you."

With these and similar incidents of prison-life, Mr. Rolfe regaled his
companion's ears. The sound of this man's voice, muffled as it was,
notwithstanding the nature of his talk, was pleasant to Richard after so
many months of enforced silence. After long starvation the stomach is
thankful for even garbage; and so it is with the mind. Moreover, any
thing would have seemed better than to sit and think during that hateful
journey. The railway part of it was by far the worst. To be made a show
of at the various stations--every one curious to see how convicts looked
in their full regimentals, chained and ironed; to behold the other
passengers who were free; to see the happy meetings of lovers and
friends, of parents and children; and the partings that were scarcely
partings at all compared with his own length of exile from all mankind:
these were things the bitterness of which Richard felt to the uttermost;
his very blood ran gall. His friend Balfour was among his
fellow-travelers, but they did not journey in the same van nor railway
carriage. Had it been otherwise Richard might have felt some sense of
companionship; whereas the contact of this man Rolfe seemed to degrade
him to his level, and isolate him from humanity itself. At the same
time, he shrank with sensitiveness from the gaze of the gaping crowd. It
is so difficult, even with the strongest will to do so, to become
callous and hardened to shame except by slow degrees: every finger
seemed to point at him in recognition, every tongue to be telling of his
disgrace and doom; whereas, in simple fact, his own mother would
scarcely have known him in such a garb, and with those iron ornaments
about his limbs; his fine hair cropped to the roots; his delicate
features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above
all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something
a long way off--almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up,
as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and