A year later they took her to Sing Sing. The General Term had refused her a new trial, the Court of Appeals had sustained the lower court. Bourke had won nothing but additional glory.

He did not go with her to Sing Sing. She saw him alone for an hour before Tarbox came to take her away. Her composure was greater than his. He was torn with horror and defeat, and his surpassing love for the woman. Not that he had given up hope by any means, nor the fight; but he knew the fearful odds, and he cursed the law which he had outwitted and played with so often and so brilliantly.

“I wish we were back in the middle ages,” he said savagely, “when a man took his rights and regulated justice by brute force. We are not half men now that we are under the yoke of a thing that operates blindly, and strikes by chance where it should strike, in nine cases out of ten. Good God! Good God! it seems incredible that I can let you go, that I shall stand by and see Tarbox lead you away. Think of the combined intellect of the world and the centuries having done no more for man than that. I must stand aside and see you go to a hideous cell in the Death House—O my God!”

He had awakened the woman down to the depths; to-day he called to life the maternal instinct in her. She put her arms about him with the passionate strength of one who would transmit courage and hope through physical pressure.

“Listen,” she said; “I don’t mind one cell more than another—and I know, I know, that you will save me. I feel it. I am not going to die. You are a man of genius. Everybody says that—everybody—I know that you will have an inspiration at the last minute. And I have been happy, happy, happy! Don’t forget that—not ever. I would go through twenty times what I have suffered in all my life for this past year. Don’t you think I can live on that for a month or two? Why, I can feel your touch, the pressure of your arms for hours after you leave me. I shall be with you every minute—”

He threw back his head, shaking it with a brief violent motion characteristic of him.

“Very well,” he said, “very well; it is not for me to be weak when you are strong. Perhaps it is because the prize is so great that the fight is so long and desperate. Oh, you wonderful woman!

“Tell me,” he said after a moment, “that it has all been as perfect to you as to me. I want to hear you say that, but I know it, I know it.”

“Oh,—I—I—”

Tarbox came and took her away. He looked as if he had lost home and friends and fortune, and did not speak from White Plains to Sing Sing. The details of the trip interested her less than such details are supposed to interest the condemned that look their last on sky and land; her head ached, and the glare of the Hudson blinded her; but as the train neared Sing Sing she opened her eyes suddenly, then sat forward with a note of admiration.

The river was covered with a dense rosy mist which half obscured the opposite shore, giving it the effect of an irregular group of islands. Above was a calm lake of yellow fire surrounded by heavy billows of boiling gold; beyond, storm clouds, growing larger and darker.

As they drove, a few moments later, to the prison, the great grey battlemented pile was swimming in the same rosy glow. Patience murmured satirically:

Tarbox looked at her in amazement. “Oh,” he said, “how do you manage it?”

“All hope is not gone,” she replied; “there is still the governor.” But she knew how slender that hope was. The governor was on the eve of re-election; public feeling was multiplied against her; the “Eye” was clamouring for her life, and strutting like a turkey cock; the “Eye” and Tammany Hall were one; the governor was the creature of Tammany Hall.

The warden was in his office. He greeted her with elaborate politeness, albeit puffed with alcohol and pride. She handed him what valuables she had not presented to Tarbox, and answered his questions in a manner not calculated to placate his Irish dignity. Then she turned to say good-bye to Tarbox, but he had disappeared. The head-keeper, a big kindly man, who pressed her arm in a paternal manner, led her down long echoing corridors, past rows and tiers of cells, and yards full of Things in striped garments, and talked to her in the manner one adopts to a frightened child, until she said:—

“I am not going to have hysterics; nor am I at all sure that I am to be executed—but please don’t imagine that I don’t appreciate your kindness.”

“Well, I like that,” he said. “To tell the truth the prospect of having a woman here has half scared me out of my wits. But if you won’t take on, I’ll do everything I can to make you comfortable. We’ve put a woman servant in there to wait on you. I hope myself it won’t be for long. The evidence is pretty black, but some of us has our opinion all the same.”

“Must I go into the Death House? I think I shouldn’t mind it so much if they’d put me anywhere else.”

“I’m afraid you must, ma’am. That’s the custom in these parts.” He opened a door with a huge key, and Patience did not need to be told that she was in the famous Death House.

A long corridor with a high window at either end; on one side a row of cells separated from the main corridor by an iron fence sufficiently removed from the cells to make space for a narrow promenade. Where the middle cell should have been was a dark arched stone passage terminated by a stout oaken door. Patience knew that it led to the execution room. Two guards walked up and down the corridor. At the end, a sullen-looking woman stood over a stove, making tea.

“You’ve got the house all to yourself,” said the keeper, with an attempt at jocularity. “If there’d been any men here I guess you’d have been sent to Dannemora, but it’s always Sing Sing for the swells, when it’s possible, you know.”

He opened the gate of the iron fence and led her down to the cell at the extreme end. It was large and well lighted, but very different from the cell at White Plains.

“Are you going to lock me in?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I must. If everything ain’t comfortable, just let me know.”

The key grated in the lock. The head-keeper with an encouraging smile walked away. Patience crouched in a corner, for the first time fully realising the awfulness of her position, her imagination leaping to the room beyond the passage. What did it look like, that horrible chair? How long—how long—the hideously practical details of electric execution—the awful mystery of it—the new death to which imagination had not yet become accustomed—

There was no sound but the monotonous pacing of the death watch. The world beyond those stone walls might have sprung away into space, leaving the great beautiful prison alone on a whirling fragment.

She sprang to her feet and clenched her hands. “I’ll not go mad and make an everlasting fool of myself,” she thought. “If I have to die, I’ll die with my head up and my eyes dry. If I have the blood of the aristocrat in me I’ll prove it then, not die like a flabby woman of the people. The people! O God, how I hate the people!”