ale, looking after us as we left him: the magistrate's
decision had evidently daunted him. His brother Silas had dropped in
abject terror on the jailer's chair; the miserable wretch shook and
shuddered dumbly, like a cowed dog.

Miss Meadowcroft returned with us to the farm, preserving unbroken
silence on the way back. I could detect nothing in her bearing which
suggested any compassionate feeling for the prisoners in her stern and
secret nature. On Naomi's withdrawal to her own room, we were left
together for a few minutes; and then, to my astonishment, the outwardly
merciless woman showed me that she, too, was one of Eve's daughters,
and could feel and suffer, in her own hard way, like the rest of us.
She suddenly stepped close up to me, and laid her hand on my arm.

"You are a lawyer, ain't you?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Have you had any experience in your profession?"

"Ten years' experience."

"Do _you_ think--" She stopped abruptly; her hard face softened; her
eyes dropped to the ground. "Never mind," she said, confusedly. "I'm
upset by all this misery, though I may not look like it. Don't notice
me."

She turned away. I waited, in the firm persuasion that the unspoken
question in her mind would sooner or later force its way to utterance
by her lips. I was right. She came back to me unwillingly, like a woman
acting under some influence which the utmost exertion of her will was
powerless to resist.

"Do _you_ believe John Jago is still a living man?"

She put the question vehemently, desperately, as if the words rushed
out of her mouth in spite of her.

"I do _not_ believe it," I answered.

"Remember what John Jago has suffered at the hands of my brothers," she
persisted. "Is it not in your experience that he should take a sudden
resolution to leave the farm?"

I replied, as plainly as before,

"It is _not_ in my experience."

She stood looking at me for a moment with a face of blank despair; then
bowed her gray head in silence, and left me. As she crossed the room to
the door, I saw her look upward; and I heard her say to herself softly,
between her teeth, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."

It was the requiem of John Jago, pronounced by the woman who loved him.

When I next saw her, her mask was on once more. Miss Meadowcroft was
herself again. Miss Meadowcroft could sit by, impenetrably calm, while
the lawyers discussed the terrible position of her brothers, with the
scaffold in