lood like yourself? You--my father--my
aunt--all treat me as if I were a child whom a word or two will set
free. I tell you again I am that man's wife. In my weakness and folly,
blind to what I called my duty, I went headlong into that gulf of
despair. I swore before the altar to be his wife till death should us
part. It is my fate, and there can be no change."

"But Myra--dear cousin!"

"I tell you, Edie, there is not an hour passes without my seeing him
once more before me holding my hand, with his eyes telling me that I am
his wife, and," she cried passionately as a low tapping was heard at the
door, "I am waiting for the day when he will be released and come,
wherever I may be, to claim me and bid me follow him, whatever may be
his future. And I shall have to go--I shall have to go."

"Myra," whispered Edie, throwing her arms about her cousin's neck,
"hush, pray! Pray hush! Auntie is at the door; she must not hear you
talk like this. These terrible fits are only for me to hear; my own
sister, pray, pray be calm."

Her touch, her kisses, had the desired effect; and as the tapping at the
door was resumed, Myra sank down sobbing on a chair, and buried her
flushed face in Edie's breast.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

BREAKING THE CAGE.

Night at The Foreland--and a dark night; the moon not due for hours, and
when she rose not likely to be seen for the heavy clouds which blotted
out the stars. Lights were out in the great building, which stood up by
day gloomy, many-windowed, and forbidding on the huge promontory,
crossed by wall and works, and with sentries between the convict
establishment and the mainland. The other three sides had the waves,
which washed the nearly perpendicular precipices, for warders, and it
was only here and there that an active man well acquainted with the
cliffs could descend to the sea, and such an acquaintanceship was not
likely to be made by the wretched men marched out, fettered and guarded,
to the great quarries day after day, and then carefully watched back to
their cells.

At times the sentinel duty outside the building could easily be relaxed
on the sea side, for the billows came thundering in, smiting the
polished rocks and flying high in air with a deafening din; but on a
calm, warm, dark night, when it was possible for a boat to approach
close in, a stricter watch was kept, lest one of the more hardened
prisoners should contrive to elude the vigilance within the buildin