A
BREAKDOWN, AND THE RESULTS ALL AROUND.--THE CONDEMNED CRIMINAL.--THE
SLOW YET SURE APPROACH OF THE HOUR OF EXECUTION.

"It's Louie!" said Jack again, after a pause. "That's the 'hine illae
lachrymae' of it, as the Latin grammar has it."

"Louie?" I repeated.

"Yes, Louie," said Jack, sadly and solemnly.

I said nothing. I saw that something more was coming, which would
afford the true key to Jack's despair. So I waited in silence till it
should come.

"As for the widow herself," said Jack, meditatively, "she isn't a bad
lot, and, if it hadn't been for Louie, I should have taken all this as
an indication of Providence that my life was to be lived out under her
guidance; but then the mischief of it is, there happens to be a Louie,
and that Louie happens to be the very Louie that I can't manage to live
without. You see there's no nonsense about this, old boy. You may
remind me of Miss Phillips and Number Three, but I swear to you
solemnly they were both nothing compared with Louie. Louie is the only
one that ever has fairly taken me out of myself, and fastened herself
to all my thoughts, and hopes, and desires. Louie is the only one that
has ever chained me to her in such a way that I never wished to leave
her for anybody else. Louie! why, ever since I've known her, all the
rest of the world and of womankind has been nothing, and, beside her,
it all sank into insignificance. There you have it! That's the way I
feel about Louie. These other scrapes of mine--what are they? Bosh and
nonsense, the absurdities of a silly boy! But Louie! why, Macrorie, I
swear to you that she has twined herself around me so that the thought
of her has changed me from a calf of a boy into a man. Now I know it
all. Now I understand why I followed her up so close. Now, now, and
now, when I know it all, it is all too late! By Jove, I tell you what
it is, I've talked like a fool about suicide, but I swear I've been so
near it this last week that it's not a thing to laugh at."

And Jack looked at me with, such a wild face and such fierce eyes that
I began to think of the long-talked-of head-stone of Anderson's as a
possibility which was not so very remote, after all.

"I'll tell you all about it," said he. "It's a relief. I feel a good
deal better already after what I have said.

"You see," said he, after a pause, in which his frown grew darker, and
his eyes were fixed on vacancy--"you see, that evening I stayed a
little later than usual