"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.
He looked up at her. "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a bright,
boyish smile, that it went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
sobbed and cried out loud.
"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think
I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh, lad, I dud!"
The confession, even in this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
the sharp cry.
He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with
the bit of tin.
Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,
that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,
or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,
she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
make her sick with a new horror.
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