d not know it, but I
am the Governor of New York, and your pardon has just gone to the
warden."

The needle dropped from one quivering old hand--a thread fell from its
companion.

"Pardon for me!"

Her lips were white, and the words trembled from them one by one. She
did not comprehend that this man had given her back to the world.

"It is true," said the matron, weeping the glad, sweet tears of a
benevolent heart, "His Excellency has pardoned you. This very hour you
are free to leave the prison."

"God help me! Oh! God help me!" cried the poor old woman, looking around
at her rude work and seating herself among it. "Where can I go?"

The Governor took some money from his pocket and laid it in her lap.
Then he went hastily from the room.

The matron sat down upon the bench, and clasped the withered hand in
hers.

"Have you no friend?"

"None."

"No duties left undone?"

The old woman drew herself up. Duties last longer than friends. Yes, she
had duties, and God had taken the shackles from her limbs that she might
perform them. Freedom was before her and an object. She arose gently and
looked around a little wildly.

"I will go now."

The matron went out and returned with a bundle of clothes and a black
bonnet upon which was some rusty crape; a huge, old-fashioned thing that
framed in her silver-white hair like a pent-house. The very shape and
fashion of this bonnet was pathetic--it spoke of so long ago. The black
dress and soft shawl with which she had come to the prison were a little
moth-eaten, but not much, for they had been carefully hoarded; but the
poor old woman looked with a sigh on her prison-dress as it fell to the
floor, and wept bitterly before she went out, as if that gloomy mass of
stones had been a pleasant home to her.

Slowly, and with a downcast look, the old woman went out of the prison,
up through the rugged quarries, where a gang of men were at work,
dragging their weary limbs from stone to stone, with the listless,
haggard effort of forced labor. Some of these men looked up, as she
passed them, and watched her with bitter envy.

"There goes a pardon," they said to each other; "and that old woman with
one foot in the grave, while we are young and strong! Freedom would be
everything to us; but what good will it do to her?"

So the poor old prisoner passed on, sadly bewildered and afraid, like a
homeless child, but thanking God for a mercy she could not yet realize.

There was