ook
care to see that the turnkey who accompanied Ellinor was "obliging."

The man took her across high-walled courts, along stone corridors, and
through many locked doors, before they came to the condemned cells.

"I've had three at a time in here," said he, unlocking the final door,
"after Judge Morton had been here. We always called him the 'Hanging
Judge.' But its five years since he died, and now there's never more
than one in at a time; though once it was a woman for poisoning her
husband. Mary Jones was her name."

The stone passage out of which the cells opened was light, and bare, and
scrupulously clean. Over each door was a small barred window, and an
outer window of the same description was placed high up in the cell,
which the turnkey now opened.

Old Abraham Dixon was sitting on the side of his bed, doing nothing. His
head was bent, his frame sunk, and he did not seem to care to turn round
and see who it was that entered.

Ellinor tried to keep down her sobs while the man went up to him, and
laying his hand on his shoulder, and lightly shaking him, he said:

"Here's a friend come to see you, Dixon." Then, turning to Ellinor, he
added, "There's some as takes it in this kind o' stunned way, while
others are as restless as a wild beast in a cage, after they're
sentenced." And then he withdrew into the passage, leaving the door
open, so that he could see all that passed if he chose to look, but
ostentatiously keeping his eyes averted, and whistling to himself, so
that he could not hear what they said to each other.

Dixon looked up at Ellinor, but then let his eyes fall on the ground
again; the increasing trembling of his shrunken frame was the only sign
he gave that he had recognised her.

She sat down by him, and took his large horny hand in hers. She wanted
to overcome her inclination to sob hysterically before she spoke. She
stroked the bony shrivelled fingers, on which her hot scalding tears kept
dropping.

"Dunnot do that," said he, at length, in a hollow voice. "Dunnot take on
about it; it's best as it is, missy."

"No, Dixon, it's not best. It shall not be. You know it shall
not--cannot be."

"I'm rather tired of living. It's been a great strain and labour for me.
I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I were fond on
him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what hard times he had at
school, he did, just as if I were his brother! I loved him next to Mo