It is strange—nay, it is horrible—that so much of barbarism still lingers in the laws and customs of a free land. Without crime or offence of any kind, a person may be taken, here in the city of New York, and confined for months among the most hideous malefactors; his self-respect broken down; his associations brutalized; and all, that the law may be fulfilled. What must that law be which requires oppression, that it may render justice?

In New York, the poor witness—a man who has the misfortune to know anything of a crime before the courts, is himself exactly in the place of a criminal. Like the malefactor, he must give bonds for his prompt appearance on the day of trial, or lacking the influence to obtain these, must himself share the prison of the very felon his evidence will condemn. Strangers thus—sea-faring men, and persons destitute of friends—are often imprisoned for months among the very dregs of humanity; innocent, and yet suffering the severest penalties of guilt.

This injustice, so glaring that a savage would blush to acknowledge it, exists almost unnoticed in a city overrun with benevolent societies, crowded with churches, and inundated with sympathies for the wronged of every nation or city on earth. If ostentatious charity would, for a time, give way to simple justice, New York like all the American cities we know of, would obtain for itself more respect abroad and more real prosperity at home.

It was under this law that Julia Warren, a young creature, just bursting into the first bloom of girlhood, pure, sensitive, and guileless as humanity can be, was dragged like a thief into the city prison. She had known the deepest degradation of poverty, and that is always so closely crowded against crime in cities, that it seems almost impossible to keep the dew upon an innocent nature. But Julia had been guarded in her poverty by principle so firm, by love so holy, that neither the close neighborhood of sin nor the gripe of absolute want had power to stain the sweet bloom of a nature that seemed to fling off evil impressions as the swan casts off waterdrops from its snowy bosom, though its whole form is bathed in them.

This young creature, in all her gentle innocence, without crime, without even the suspicion of a fault, was now the inmate of a prison, the associate of felons, hand-in-hand with guilt of a kind and degree that had never entered even her imagination.

At first, when the officer separated the poor girl from her grandparents, she struggled wildly, shrieked for help, and at last fell to imploring the man, with eyes so wild and eloquence so startling, that he paused in one of the dark corridors leading from the court, and strove to soothe her, supposing that she was terrified by the gloom of the place.

"No, no!" she answered. "It is not that. I did not see that it was dark. I did not look at anything. My grandfather—poor grandma! Let me go with them. I'm not afraid. I don't care for being in prison, only let me stay where they are!"

"Your grandmother is not here!"

"Not here—not here!" answered the poor creature, wildly and aghast. "Then what has become of her? Let me go—let me go, I say. She will die!"

Julia unlocked the hands that she had clasped, flung back the hair from her face, and fled down the corridor so swiftly, that the keeper, taken by surprise, was left far behind. An officer, coming in from the court, seized her by the arm as she was passing him.

"Not so fast, canary bird; not quite so fast. It takes swifter wings than yours to get out of this cage."

Julia looked at the man, breathless with affright.

"What do you hold me for? Why can't I go?" she gasped forth.

"Because you are a prisoner, little one!"

"But I have done nothing!"

"Nobody ever does anything that comes here," said this man, with a contemptuous smile. "Never were so many innocent people crowded together."

As he spoke, the man tightened his hold on her arm, and moved forward, forcing her along with him.

The poor creature winced under the pain of his grasp.

"You hurt my arm," she said, in a low voice.

"Do I?" replied the man, affected by the despondency of her tone. "I did not mean to do that; but it would be difficult to touch a little, delicate thing like you without leaving a mark. Come, don't cry. I did not hurt you on purpose."

"I know it. It is not that," answered the girl, lifting her eyes, from which the big tears were dropping like rain.

"Well, well, go quietly to the women's department. They will not keep you long, unless you have been stealing, or something of that sort."

"Stealing!" faltered the girl, "stealing!" The color flashed into her pale, wet cheeks; a faint, scornful smile quivered over her lips.

The officer from whom she had fled now came up. "Come," he said, with a shade of impatience, "I cannot be kept waiting in this way."

"I am ready!" answered the poor girl, in a voice of utter despondency, while her head dropped upon her bosom. "If I am a prisoner, take me away. But what—what have I done?"

"Never mind; settle that with the court. I am in a hurry, so come along!"

Julia neither expostulated nor attempted to resist.

She gave her hand to the officer, who led her quickly forward. They threaded the dim, vault-like passage, and paused before a grated door, through which the trembling girl could see dark, squalid figures moving about in the dusky twilight that filled the prison. Two or three faces, haggard and fiend like, were pressed up against the bars. One was that of a negro woman, scarred with many a street brawl, whose inflamed eyes glared wickedly upon the innocent creature whom the laws had sent to be her companion.

"Get back—back with you!" commanded the officer, dashing his keys against the grating. "Your hideous faces frighten the poor thing!"

The faces flitted away, grinning defiance, and sending back a burst of hoarse laughter that made Julia shiver from head to foot. She drew close to the man, clinging to his garments, while he turned the heavy lock and thrust the door half open. The dim vista of a hall, with cells yawning on one side, and filled with gloomy light, through which wild, impish figures wandered restlessly to and fro, or sat motionless against the walls, met Julia's gaze. She shrank back, clinging desperately to her conductor—

"Oh, mercy, mercy! Not here—not here!" she cried, pallid and shivering.

The man raised her firmly in his arms, and passing through the door, set her down. She heard the clank of keys; the shooting of a heavy bolt. She saw the shadow of this, her last friend, fall across the grating; and then, in dreary desolation, she sat down upon a wooden bench, and leaning her cold cheek against the wall, closed her eyes. The tears pressed through those long, dark eyelashes, and rolled, one by one, in heavy drops, over her face. Her arms hung helplessly down; all the energies of her young life seemed utterly prostrated.

The hall was full of women of all ages, and bearing every stamp that vice or sorrow impresses on the countenance. Some, old and hardened in evil, stood aloof looking upon the heart-stricken girl with their stony, pitiless eyes; others, younger, more reckless and fierce in their sympathies, gathered around in a crowd, commenting upon her grief, some mockingly, others with a touch of feeling. Black and white, all huddled around the bench she occupied, pouring their hot breath out, till she sickened and grew faint, as if the boughs of a Upas tree were drooping over her.

"She's sick—she's fainting away!" cried one of the women. "Bring some water!"

"No," cried another. "If we had a drop of brandy now. But water, bah!"

"It's the horrors—see how she trembles," exclaimed a third, with a chuckle and a toss of the head.

"No such thing. She's too young—too handsome!"

"Oh, get away! Don't I know the symptoms?" interrupted the first speaker, with a coarse laugh. "Ain't I young—ain't I handsome? Who says no to that? And yet haven't you heard me yell—haven't you heard me rave with the horrors?"

"That was because the doctor prescribes brandy," interposed a sly-looking mulatto woman, folding her arms and turning her head saucily on one side. "When that medicine comes, you are still enough."

This retort was followed by a general laugh, in which the object joined, till the tears rolled down her cheeks.

In the midst of this coarse glee, Julia had fallen like a withered flower, upon the bench. That moment, the huge negress, who had so terrified the poor creature at the grating, plunged out from a cell in the upper end of the hall, and came toward the group with a tin cup full of water in her hand.

Had a fiend come forth on an errand of mercy, it would not have seemed more out of place than that hideous creature under the influence of a kind impulse. She came down the hall as rapidly as her naked feet, hampered by an old pair of slip-shod shoes, could move. The dress hung in rents and festoons of dirty and faded calico around her gaunt limbs, trailing the stone floor on one side, and lifted high above her clumsy ankles on the other.

The women scattered as she approached, giving her a full view of the fainting girl.

"So you've done it among you—smothered her. How dare you? Didn't you see that I took a fancy to her, before she came in? Let her alone. I want a pet, and she's mine."

"Yours!" "Why, it was your face that frightened her to death. There hasn't been a bit of color in her lips since she saw you," answered the woman that had so eagerly recommended brandy, and who kept her place in spite of the formidable negress. "Here, give me the water, and get out of my sight."

The negress pushed this woman roughly aside, and kneeling down by the senseless girl, bathed her forehead with the water. Julia did not stir. Her face continued deathly white; a faint violet tinge lay upon her lips and around her eyes; her little hands fell down to the stone floor; her feet dropped heavily from the bench. This position, more than the still face even, was fearfully like death.

"Call a keeper," cried half a dozen voices, "she is scared to death!"

"The doctor!" urged as many more voices. "It will take a doctor to bring her out of that fit!"

"We won't have a doctor," exclaimed the old negress, stoutly. "He'd call it tremens, and give her brandy or laudanum. I tell you, she isn't one of that sort! Don't believe a drop of the ardent ever touched her lips!"

Again a coarse laugh broke up from among the prisoners.

The negress dashed a handful of water across the poor face over which that laughter floated like the orgies of fiends around a death couch. She rose to one knee, and turned her fierce eyes upon the scoffers.

I have never stained a page in my life with profane language, even when describing a profane person; never have placed the name of God irreverently into the lips of an ideal character. Sooner would I feel an oath burning upon my own soul, than register one where it might familiarize itself to a thousand souls, surprised into its use by their confidence in the author. Even here, where profanity is the common language of the place, I will risk a feebler description in my own language, rather than for one instant break through the rule of a life. Yet amid language and scenes which I could not force this pen to write, and creatures, most of them, brutalized by vice to a degree that I shrink from describing, this young guileless creature was plunged by the laws of an enlightened people. When she opened her eyes, that scarred, black face, less repulsive from a touch of kindly feeling, but hideous still, was the first object that greeted them.

The woman, as I have said, had risen to one knee. The holy name of God trembled on her coarse lips, prefacing a torrent of abusive expostulation that broke from them in the rudest and most repulsive language.

"You needn't laugh, don't I know better—fifty times better than any of you? Haven't I been here—this is the fifteenth time? Don't I go to my country-seat on Blackwell's Island every summer of my life? How many times have you been there, the best of you, I should like to ask? Twice, three times. Bah! what should you know of life? Stand out of the way. She's beginning to sob. You shan't stifle her again, I promise you. It was the water did it. Which of you could be got out of a fit with water—tell me that? Here, just come one of you and feel her breath, while the tears are in it—sweet as a rose, moist as dew. I tell you, she never tasted anything stronger than bread and milk in her life!"

The woman clenched this truth with an imprecation on herself which made the young girl start up and look wildly around, as if she believed herself encompassed by a band of demons.

"What is the matter? Are you afraid?" said the white prisoner, that had formerly spoken, bending over her.

"Get out of the way," said the negress, with another oath. "It's my pet, I tell you."

The terrible creature, whose very kindness was brutal, reached forth her arm and attempted to draw Julia to her side, but the poor girl recoiled, shuddering from the touch, and fell upon her knees, covering her ears with both hands.

"Are you afraid of me? Is that it?" shouted the negress, almost touching the strained fingers with her mouth.

"Yes, yes!" broke from her tremulous lips, and Julia kept her eyes upon the woman in a wild stare. "I am afraid."

"This is gratitude," said the woman, fiercely. "I brought her to, and she looks at me as if I was a mad dog."

Julia cowered under the fiery glance with which these words were accompanied. This only exasperated her hideous friend, and with an angry grip of the teeth, she seized one little hand, forcing it away from the ear, that was on the instant filled with a fresh torrent of curses.

"Oh, don't! Pray, pray. It is dreadful to swear so!"

"Swear! Why, I didn't swear—not a word of it. Have been talking milk and water all the time just for your sake. Leave it all to these ladies, if I haven't!" said the woman, evidently impressed with the truth of her assertion, and appealing, with an air of simple confidence, to her fellow-prisoners: for profanity had become with her a fixed habit, and she was really unconscious of it.

A laugh of derision answered this singular appeal, and a dozen voices gave mocking assurance that there had been a mistake about the matter, saying,

"Oh, no! old Mag never swore in her life."

Tortured by the wild tumult, and driven to the very confines of insanity, Julia could scarcely forbear screaming for help. She started up, avoiding the negress with a desperate spring sidewise, and staggered toward the grated door. It seemed to her impossible to draw a deep breath, in the midst of those wretched beings!

"Mamma, mamma!" said a soft, sweet voice, from one of the cells, and as Julia turned her face, she saw through the narrow iron door-way the head of a child, bending eagerly forward and radiant with joyous surprise.

Julia paused, held forth both her trembling hands, and entered the cell, smiling through her tears as if an angel had called.

The child arose from the floor, for it had been upon its hands and knees, and putting back its golden hair, that broke into waves and curls in spite of neglect, with two soiled and dimpled hands, it gazed upon the intruder in speechless disappointment. Julia saw this, and her heart sank again.

"It was not me you wanted," she said, laying her hand tremblingly on the child's shoulder. "You are sorry that I came?"

"Yes," answered the child, and his soft, brown eyes filled with tears. "I thought it was mamma. It was dark, and I could not see, but it seemed as if you were mamma."

Julia stooped down and kissed the child. In that dim light, it was difficult to say which of those beautiful faces seemed the most angelic.

"But I love you. I am glad to see you," she said, in a voice that made the little boy smile through his tears. He fixed his eyes upon her in a long, earnest gaze, and then nestling close to her side, murmured, "And I love you!"

There was a narrow bed in the cell, and Julia sat down upon it, lifting the child to her knee. In return, she felt a little arm steal around her neck and a warm cheek laid against her own. The innocent nature of the child blended with that of the maiden, as blossoms in a strange atmosphere may be supposed to lean toward each other.

"Do they shut up children in this wicked place? How came you here, darling?"

"I don't know!" answered the child, shaking its beautiful head.

"But did you come alone?"

"Oh, no! She came with me."

"Who—your mamma?" questioned Julia, so deeply interested in the child, that for the moment, her own grief was forgotten.

"No, not her. They call her my mamma, but she isn't. Come here, softly, and I will let you see."

He drew Julia to the entrance, and pointed with his finger toward a female, who sat cowering by a stove a little distance up the passage. There was something so picturesque in the bold, Roman outlines of this woman's face, that it riveted Julia's attention. The large head was covered with masses of dull, black hair, gathered up in a loose coil behind, and falling down the cheeks in dishevelled waves. The nose, rising in a haughty and not ungraceful curve; the massive forehead and heavy chin, with a large mouth coral red and full of sensual expression, gave to that head, bending downward with its side-face toward the light, the interest and effect of some old picture, which, without real beauty, haunts the memory like an unforgotten sin.

This woman had evidently received some injury on the forehead, for a scarlet silk handkerchief was knotted across it, the ends mingling behind with the neglected braids of her hair, which, but for it, must have fallen in coils over her neck and shoulders.

Her dress, of blue barÉge, had once been elegant, if not rich; but in that place, faded and soiled, with the flounces half torn away, and the rents gathered rudely up with pins that she had found upon the stone-floor of her prison, it had a look of peculiar desolation. Every fold bespoke that flash poverty which profligacy makes hideous.

A book with yellow covers, soiled and torn, lay open upon this woman's lap; and with her large, full arms loosely folded on her bosom, she bent over it with a look of gloating interest, that betrayed all the intensity of her evil nature. You could see her black eyes kindle beneath their inky lashes, as she impatiently dashed over a leaf, or was molested in any way by the noise around.

You could not look upon this woman for an instant without feeling the influence which a strong character, even in repose, fixes upon the mind. Powerful intellect and strong passions—the one utterly untrained, the other curbless and fierce—broke through every curve of her sensual person and every line of her face.

As Julia stood in the cell-door, with one arm around the child, this woman chanced to look up, and caught those beautiful eyes fixed so steadily upon her. She returned the glance with a hard, impudent stare, which filled the young creature with alarm, while it served to fascinate her gaze.

The woman seemed enraged that her glance had not made the stranger cower at once. Crushing her book in one hand, she arose and came forward, sweeping her way through the prisoners with that sort of undulating swagger into which vice changes what was originally grace. She came up to Julia with an oath upon her lips, demanding why she had been staring at her so?

Julia did not answer, but shrunk close to the child, who cringed against her, evidently terrified by the menacing attitude and fierce looks that his temerity had provoked.

"Come here, you little wretch," exclaimed the termagant, securing him by the arm, and jerking him fiercely through the cell-door. "How dare you speak to anybody here without leave? Come along, or I'll break every bone in your body."

With a swing of the arm, that sent the child whirling forward in fierce leaps, she landed him at her old seat, and sitting down, crowded the beautiful creature between her and the hot stove, setting one foot, bursting through a white slipper of torn and dirty satin, heavily in his lap to hold him quiet, while she went on with her French novel.

The poor little fellow bent his head, dropped his pretty hands on the floor, each side of him, and sat motionless and meek, like some heavenly cherub crushed beneath the foot of a demon. Once he struggled a little, and made an effort to creep back, for the heat pouring from the huge mass of iron which stood close before him, had become insupportable.

The woman, without lifting her eyes from the book, put her hand down upon his shoulder with a fierce imprecation, and ordered him to be quiet. The poor infant dared not move again, though his face, his neck, and his little arms became scarlet with the heat, and perspiration stood upon his forehead like rain, saturating his golden hair, and even his garments. He lifted his soft eyes, full of terror and of entreaty, to the hard face above him, but it was gloating over one of those foul passages with which Eugene Sue has cursed the world, and the innocent creature shrank from the expression as he had cowered from the heat. Tears now crowded into his eyes, and he turned them, with a look of helpless misery, upon the young girl who stood regarding him, with looks of unutterable pity.

Julia Warren could not withstand this look. She was no longer timid; the prison was forgotten now; her very soul went forth in compassion for the one being more helpless than herself, whom she might have the power to protect. She went softly up to the woman, and touched her upon the arm. Compassion gave the young creature that exquisite tact which makes generous impulses so beautiful.

"Please, madam, let the child stay with me a little longer; I will keep him very quiet while you read!"

The meek demeanor, the soft, sweet tone in which this was uttered, fell upon the sense like a handful of freshly gathered violets. The woman had loved pure things once, and this voice started her heart as if a gush of perfumed air had swept through it. She looked up suddenly, and fixing her large, bold eyes upon the girl, seemed wondering alike at her loveliness and courage in thus addressing her.

Julia endured the gaze with gentle forbearance, but she could not keep her eyes from wandering toward the child, who, seizing her dress with one hand, was shrouding his face in the folds.

"How came you here?" demanded the woman, rudely.

"I don't know," was the meek answer.

"Don't know, bah! What have you done?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing!" repeated the woman, with a sickening sneer; "so you're not a chicken after all; know the ropes, ha! nothing! I never give that answer—despise it—always have the courage to own what I have the courage to act; it's original; I like it. Take my advice, girl, own the truth and shame the—the old gentleman. He's an excellent friend of mine, no doubt, but I love to put the old fellow out of countenance with the truth now and then. The rest of them never do it; not one of them ever committed a crime in their lives—unfortunate, nothing more."

"Will you let me take up the child?" said Julia, with a pleading smile; "see, the heat is killing him!"

The woman glanced sharply at the little creature, half moved her foot, and then pressed it down again, and drew back a little, dragging the child with her; but she resisted the effort which Julia made to release him.

"Not now, the child's mine; I'll make him as wicked as I like myself, but he shan't run wild among the prisoners!"

"Are you really his mother?" said Julia.

"Yes, I am really his mother!" was the mocking reply; "what have you against it?"

"Nothing, nothing—only I should think you would be afraid to have him here!"

"And your mother—she isn't afraid to have you here, I suppose."

"I have no mother!" said Julia, in a tone of sadness, that made itself felt even upon the bad nature of her listener.

"No mother, well don't mourn for that," said the woman, with a touch of passionate feeling. "Thank God for it, if you believe in a God; she won't follow you here with her white, miserable face; she won't starve to keep you from sin—or die—die by inches, I tell you, because all is of no use. You won't see her crowded into a pine coffin, and tumbled into Potter's Field, and feel—feel in the very core of your heart that you have sent her there. Thank God—thank God, I say, miserable girl, that you have no mother!"

The woman had risen as she spoke, her imposing features, her whole form quivering with passion. Tears crowded into her lurid eyes, giving them fire, depth, and expression. She ceased speaking, fell upon the seat again, and, covering her face with the soiled novel, sobbed aloud.

The child, released from the bondage of her foot, stood up, trembling beneath the storm of her words; but when she fell down and began to weep, his lips grew tremulous, his little chest began to heave, and climbing up the stool upon which his mother crouched, he leaned over and kissed her temple.

This angel kiss fell upon her forehead like a drop of dew; she dashed the novel from her face, and flung her arm over the child.

"Look!" she cried, with a fierce sob, turning her dusky and tear-stained face upon the young girl. "He has got a mother; look on her, and then dare to mourn because you have none!"

"But I have a grandfather and grandmother that love me as if I were their own child," said Julia, deeply moved by the fierce anguish thus revealed to her.

"And where are they?"

"My grandfather is here."

"Here! How came it about? What is he charged with?"

Julia's lips grew pale at the word "murder!" Even the woman seemed appalled by the mention of a crime so much more serious than she had expected.

"But you—they do not charge you with murder?" she questioned, in a subdued voice.

"No!" said Julia, innocently. "They charge me with being a witness!"

Once more a torrent of fiery imprecations burst from the lips of that miserable woman—imprecations against a law hideous almost as her own sins. Julia recoiled, aghast, beneath this profane violence. The child dropped down from the stool, and crept to her side, weeping. The woman saw this, and checked herself.

"Then you have really done nothing?"

Julia shook her head and smiled sadly.

"A beautiful country—beautiful laws, that send an innocent child to take lessons in life here, and from women like us. Oh, my dear, it's a great pity you haven't been in the Penitentiary half a dozen times; lots of benevolent people would be ready to reform you at any expense then."

Julia smiled dimly. She did not quite understand what the woman was saying.

"It makes my heart burn to see you here," continued the woman, vehemently; "it's a sin—a wicked shame; but I'll take care of you. There's some good left in me yet. Just get acquainted with that little wretch, and no one else; stay in your cell; the keeper won't let them crowd in upon you. The matron will be here by-and-bye. She'll be a mother to you; she's a Christian—a thorough, cheerful, hard-working Christian. I believe in these things, though I would not own it to every one. Kind, because she can't help it without going against her own nature. I like that woman—there isn't a creature here wicked enough not to like her."

"When shall I see her?" questioned Julia, brightening beneath this first gleam of hope.

"To-morrow morning—perhaps before—I don't know exactly. She's in and out whenever there is good to be done. But come, go into my cell—they haven't given you one yet, I suppose—the whole gang of them are coming this way again."

Julia looked up and saw a crowd of women coming up from the grated door, where they had been drawn by some noise in the outer passage. Terrified by the dread of meeting that horrible old negress again, she grasped the little hand that still held to her garments, and absolutely fled after the woman, who entered the cell where she had first seen the child.

The prisoners were amused by her evident terror, and gathered around the entrance; but as Julia sat down upon the bed, pale and panting with affright, her self-constituted guardian started forward and dashed the iron door in their faces, with a clang that sounded from one hollow corridor to another, like the sudden clang of a bell.

"There," she said, with a smile that for a moment swept away the fierce expression from her face, "I'd like to see one of them bold enough to come within arm's length of that. My home's my castle, if it is in a prison. I've been here often enough to know my rights. If the laws won't keep you free from that gang, I will!"

It was wonderful the influence that gentle girl had won over the depraved being who protected her thus. After she entered the cell, no rude or profane word passed the woman's lips. She seemed to have shut out half that was wicked in her own nature when she dashed the iron door against her fellow-prisoners. Her large, black eyes brightened with a sort of rude pleasure as she saw her child creep into Julia's lap, and lay his head on her bosom.

"How naturally you take to one another," she said, letting down the black masses of her hair, and beginning to disentangle the braids with her fingers, as if the pure eyes of her guest had reproached their untidy state. "When I was a little girl, we had plenty of wild roses in a swamp near the house. It is strange, I have not thought of them in ten years; but when I saw you and the child sitting there together, it seemed as if I could reach out my hands and fill them."

Julia did not answer; her eyes were bent on the child, who had ceased to cry, and lay quietly in her arms—so quietly that she could detect a drowsy mist stealing over his eyes. The woman went on threading out her long hair in silence. After awhile Julia, who had been watching the soft, brown eyes of the child as the white lids dropped over them gradually like the closing petals of a flower, looked up with a smile, so pure, so bright, that the woman unconsciously smiled also.

"He is sound asleep," said the young girl, putting back the moist curls from his forehead. "See what a smile, I have been watching it deepen on his face since his eyes began to close."

The woman put back her hair with both hands, and turned her eyes with a sort of stern mournfulness upon the sleeping boy.

"He never goes to sleep on my bosom like that," she said, at last, with a bitter smile, and more bitter tone. "How could he? My heart beats sometimes loud enough to scare myself; I wonder if wild flowers really do blossom over Mount Etna? If they do, why should not my own child rest over my own heart?"

"My grandfather has told me that flowers do grow around volcanoes," said Julia, with a soft smile, "but it is because the fire never reaches them; if scorched once they would perish!"

"And my heart scorches everything near it. Is that what you mean?" said the woman, with a degree of mildness that was peculiarly impressive in a voice usually so stern and loud.

"When you were angry to-day, he trembled; when you wept he kissed you," answered the gentle girl, looking mildly into the dark face of her companion, whose fierce nature yielded both respect and attention to the moral courage that spoke from those young lips.

"Well, what if I do frighten him? We love that best which we fear most. It is human nature; at any rate it was my nature, and should be my child's," said the woman, striving to cast off the influence of which she was becoming ashamed.

"And did you ever fear any one?"

"Did I ever love any one?" was the answer, given in a voice so deep, so earnest, that it seemed to ring up from the very bottom of a heart where it had been buried for years.

"I hope so, I trust so—do you not love your child?"

The woman dashed back the entire weight of her hair with an impetuous sweep of one hand; then, with the whole Roman contour of her face exposed, she turned a keen look upon the young face lifted so innocently to hers. Long and searching was that look. The shadows of terrible thoughts swept over that face. Some words, it might be of passion, it might be of prayer—for bitterness, grief and repentance, all were blended in that look—trembled unuttered on her lips. Then she suddenly flung up her arms and falling across the bed, cried out in bitter anguish—"Oh, my God!—my God! can I never again be like her?"