"You want to save my guilty soul," she reminded him furiously.
"There's but one way of doing it. Save my child!"

He raised her. Her fierce tearless eyes questioned his face
in a mute expectation dreadful to see. Suddenly, a foretaste
of death--the death that was so near now!--struck her with
a shivering fit: her head dropped on the Minister's shoulder.
Other men might have shrunk from the contact of it. That true
Christian let it rest.

Under the maddening sting of suspense, her sinking energies
rallied for an instant. In a whisper, she was just able to put
the supreme question to him.

"Yes? or No?"

He answered: "Yes."

A faint breath of relief, just audible in the silence, told me
that she had heard him. It was her last effort. He laid her,
insensible, on the bed, by the side of her sleeping child.
"Look at them," was all he said to me; "how could I refuse?"


CHAPTER V.

MISS CHANCE ASSERTS HERSELF.

The services of our medical officer were required, in order to
hasten the recovery of the Prisoner's senses.