I replied as before, by a bow.

"Now," she said, "I may tell you what I mean. In the autumn
of last year I was taken to see some waxworks. Portraits of
criminals were among them. There was one portrait--" She
hesitated; her infernal self-possession failed her at last. The
color left her face; she was no longer able to look at me firmly.
"There was one portrait," she resumed, "that had been taken after
the execution. The face was so hideous; it was swollen to such
a size in its frightful deformity--oh, sir, don't let me be seen
in that state, even by the strangers who bury me! Use your
influence--forbid them to take the cap off my face when I am
dead--order them to bury me in it, and I swear to you I'll meet
death tomorrow as coolly as the boldest man that ever mounted the
scaffold!" Before I could stop her, she seized me by the hand,
and wrung it with a furious power that left the mark of her grasp
on me, in a bruise, for days afterward. "Will you do it?" she
cried. "You're an honorable man; you will keep your word. Give me
your promise!"

I gave her my promise.

The relief to her tortured spirit expressed itself horribly in
a burst of frantic laughter. "I can't help it," she gasped; "I'm
so happy."

My enemies said of me, when I got my appointment, that I was too
excitable a man to be governor of a prison. Perhaps they were not
altogether wrong. Anyhow, the quick-witted Doctor saw some change
in me, which I was not aware of myself. He took my arm and led me