s the matter.
It was a rare thing for Densie to be at all demonstrative, but in the
suffering expression of Mrs. Worthington's face she recognized something
familiar, and attached herself at once to the weak, nervous woman, who
sought her bed, and burying her face in the pillow cried herself to
sleep, while Densie, like some white-haired ghost, sat watching her
silently.

"The poor thing has had trouble," she whispered, "trouble in her day,
and it has left deep furrows in her forehead, but it cannot have been
like mine. She surely, was never betrayed, or deserted, or had her only
child stolen from her. The wretch! I cursed him once, when my heart was
harder than it is now. I have forgiven him since, for well as I could, I
loved him."

There was a moaning sound in the winter wind howling about Spring Bank
that night, but it suited Densie's mood, and helped to quiet her
spirits, as, until a late hour, she sat by Mrs. Worthington, who aroused
up at intervals, saying, in answer to Densie's inquiries, she was not
sick, she was only tired--that sleep would do her good.

And while they were thus together a convict sought his darkened cell and
laid him down to rest upon the narrow couch which had been his bed so
long. Drearily to him the morning broke, and with the struggling in of
the daylight he found upon his floor the handkerchief dropped
inadvertently by Mrs. Worthington, and unseen till now. He knew it was
not unusual for strangers to visit the cells, and so he readily guessed
how it came there, holding it a little more to the light to see the name
written so plainly upon it.

"Eliza Worthington." That was what the convict read, a blur before his
eyes, and a strange sensation at his heart. "Eliza Worthington."

How came she there, and when? Suddenly he remembered the event of
yesterday, the woman who fainted, the tall man who carried her out, the
beautiful girl who had looked at him so pityingly, and then, while every
nerve quivered with intense excitement, he whispered:

"That was my wife! I did not see her face, but she saw me, fainting at
the sight."

Hard, and villainous, and sinful as that man had been, there was a
tender chord beneath the villain exterior, and it quivered painfully as
he said "fainted at the sight." This was the keenest pang of the whole,
for as Densie Densmore had moaned the previous night, "I loved him
once," so he now, rocking to and fro on his narrow bed, with that
handkerchief pressed