A DOUBLE GUARD.
It was true the officer had insisted that Katharine should be removed to
one of the upper chambers. She was gradually recovering strength, and
though he had not the heart to propose her removal to prison, the
dangers of escape became more apparent each hour. At last he suggested
the only means of safety that presented itself--Katharine must be
confined in the upper story, from whence flight would be difficult,
unless assistance should come from without, a thing that he considered
more than improbable.
Mrs. Allen made no resistance to these arrangements, for well the poor
mother knew that all protest would be in vain. In some respects she
preferred the change. It would remove Katharine from the sight of her
jailor whenever the door of her room was opened; a presence that had
become unspeakably oppressive of late. She seemed afraid of
understanding what it meant, but every time his face passed by, or his
shadow appeared on the wall, a terror came into her eyes, and she would
look wistfully out, as you have seen a poor little rabbit peering with
his great brown eyes through the trap some cruel boy had baited for him
when the snow covered all other food.
Mrs. Allen had seen this with an aching heart. The man who usurped her
own high-backed chair, with his feet stretched out stolidly on the
hearth, watching the door of her child's room, had become a torment to
her, patient and undemonstrative as she was. So the room was prepared,
and in gentle silence Katharine took possession of it. She had no
courage to question her mother, but shrunk with sensitive pain from the
truth, harassed with fears, yet dreading to have them confirmed.
The mother, too, shrunk from the subject, which was forever lying cold
at her heart. What good would it do were she to place all the hideous
danger before her child? The law would strike hard enough when its time
came; she had no heart to help it by a word.
They were very silent together, those two wretched women, for--with the
one subject that filled their existence held in abeyance--what could
they talk about? But the mother grew so gentle, so exquisitely loving,
that some gleams of joy broke through their misery; still, the
tenderness of this affection almost broke her child's heart. It was the
offshoot of a great sorrow, which had softened the stern character of
the mother, and lifted the young girl into sudden womanhood. The hour of
maternity, be it in joy or grief, breaks down all the barriers of age,
and, as in this case, the extremes of womanhood meet with some degree of
equality.
But a painful apprehension was always at Katharine's heart. No one told
her the terrible fate of which that man, sitting forever on her mother's
hearth, was the harbinger, but the truth pressed vaguely upon her
understanding, and her solitude was a perpetual terror. She grew keen
in her observation. She searched even the mournful eyes of little Paul
and the grieved features of Jube, in her silent quest after the
knowledge she had no courage to claim in words.
Now two men kept guard in the room below. Their prisoner was getting
strong, and more vigilance became advisable.
The night that this double guard was set upon her, Katharine could not
sleep, for the two men conversed in low voices that penetrated to her
chamber, and tortured every nerve in her body. What evil things were
they saying in those muffled tones? Perhaps talking about her babe? What
would they do with her in the end?
Dark ideas of the terrible truth came slowly over her. She was seized
with an uncontrollable wish to hear what it was that kept her jailors in
such close conversation.
Shivering with dread, yet filled with a sort of wild courage, she arose
and crept from her room down-stairs. A door opened from the stairway
into the kitchen--it was left slightly ajar--and through the crevice
came a gleam of light from a candle that stood on the mantlepiece.
Katharine sunk down on the lowest step and listened keenly.
"Yes," said one of the men, "it's a settled thing--they'll take her off
in the morning. Tough, though, aint it."
"Does the old woman know it?"
"I reckon not; the constable says he can't find the heart to tell her
till the last minute."
"What will they do with her in the end? Have you any idea?"
"Well, law's law, you know, and I calculate they'll hang the poor
critter."
"No!"
"Sartin; the constable was saying so at the hill store only yesterday.
The strangling," says he, "might a been got over; but that burying of
the poor little critter in the snow was the pint that no lawyer could
ixplain."
"Yes; that allus stops a feller's mouth when he sets out to defend her,
and yet--"
"What was you a saying?"
"And yet I can't bleave she really did it."
"It's unnatural; but facts are facts."
"Poor critter; I wonder if she's told any thing about its father yet.
The feller ought to be hung fifty times where she had once."
"I reckon not; the old woman said that her daughter was married, at the
examination, but she would not name the man, and people were left to
guess."
"Was it Nelson Thrasher, do you really think?"
"There's no telling, and maybe it wont come out till court day."
"And when it does, what'll the law do with him?"
"Well, I aint quite sure; but suppose it would be brought in preup terus
criminus; that is, 'complice 'fore the act."
"You don't say so. Then it'll be a hanging matter for him, too?"
"Sure as Sunday."
"But how will they find him? Maybe, Katharine wont inform."
"Oh, she'll tell; women always do."
The poor young mother behind the door was quaking with fear, and chilled
through and through with the cold. Her teeth chattered so loudly that
she lost the next few words; but those that followed were horrible
enough.
"Did you ever see a person hung?"
"Yes; once."
"Wall!"
"Don't ask me about it; the rope broke, and--"
"Hark! wasn't that a voice?"
"No; it's one of the icicles falling from the eaves."
"It seemed to come from the stairs, I thought; suppose we look."
"Oh, be still. It's the ice, I tell you. Just hand me a drink of that
ginger cider. This talk about hanging makes the cold chills run over
me."
There was a moment's silence, then a deep, satisfied breath, and the
jingle of a pewter mug as it was set down between the andirons.