CHAPTER VII.

"Reason thus with life,

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skyey influences),

That dost this habitation, where thou keeps't,
Hourly afflict: merely thou art death's fool."

NED SWIFTFOOT was not hopeless; but he now believed that he should die-and that he should die the death of a felon. He was still visited by Grace Wells constantly at daybreak, and it was a pleasure for which he would have laid down his life willingly, rather than be deprived of it-provided it had been a death unattended by disgrace.

But to be

hung like a dog before the eyes of thousands! that was the shuddering thought that was the freezing reflection to nip his warm blood.

and hold it stagnated in his veins - that was the terrible horror haunting him in the hot, fitful, and feverish moments of sleep. Sleep! No, he never slept. His leaden eyelids, weighed down by ceaseless anxiety, would close for short and uneasy snatches of repose; but then gibbering phantoms were conjured in his fretted brain, distraught with unintermitting agony, and he saw the monsters of the mind, like creatures gifted with breath and with blood, grinning and mocking the victim of their sport. And then he wokewell! he started from the dream, and stretched his eyes full wide and gaping open, and drew a hot, dried, and parched palm across his sweating, but cold and clammy brow.

But even the most oppressed and the most disheartened the wearied of life and, perhaps, the hopeless of heaven-have still a bright, fresh, green spot to turn their aching eyes to, and Ned Swiftfoot was not without his. Grace, the wan, pale-cheeked, thin, attenuated

Grace, smiled, or seemed to smile in his imagination, upon him, and then he turned with a sob, like a greyhound spent in wind, and again courted the dew of sweet and honied slumber. And as a child woke by some fractious conjuring of his giddy, wandering brain, and then meeting the loving look of its patient and adoring mother, the fevered prisoner met the consolation of his remembrance, and strived again for oblivion of his misery.

"I'm not a man to quarrel with anybody in difficulties," observed Mr Thomas Smutt, in a voice between a yawn and a decided grumble; "but really you are so uncommonly uneasy that to sleep is a matter of more than a trouble to accomplish. It becomes an impossibility in a mate occupying the same nest, as I do, to catch more than forty winks at a time."

"Then change your nest," replied the pri"I shall make no objection in

soner.

breathing the little air I get here without your sharing it."

"As far as the inclination's concerned," rejoined the gaoler, "mine is precisely o' the same stock as yours. But then, d'ye see❞— and the hangman smote himself heavily on the breast" my conscience won't let me take such liberties. I'm sworn to take particular care and charge of my wisitors—wisitors," repeated he, "sounds more genteel than prisoners, or gaol-birds. Besides, they are my wisitors; for none of 'em stay longer than a fixed time, varying in accordance with the periods named in the tickets of admission." And then Mr Thomas Smutt broke into an extremely loud and hoarse laugh at his own facetiousness, which, echoing through the vaulted cell, at that dark and dead hour of the night, sounded strangely grating to the

ear.

"You appear to be in no great ill humour at my breaking your rest," observed Ned.

"What's the use of being out of temper with a blade like you?" replied the gaoler. "I shouldn't wonder, now, but you'd feel quite tickled at finding me ruffled, and would rasp me the more for it. There'd be no quieting you by wagging the rough side of one's tongue in the style that I've struck scores of my wisitors dumb. No, no, no. You must be dealt with and by very different measures."

"The croak of a toad has certainly but few terrors for me," rejoined Ned.

"There," returned Mr Thomas Smutt, "there you are again with one o' them cutting, sharp answers. You've no more respect-"

"Respect?" interrupted the prisoner, and then his laugh was louder and longer than the hangman's.

"And why not respect?" inquired the gaoler. A man in office is generally, and for the most part, respected by those he's got the whip hand of, I believe."