in the poisoned tunic was surely invented by some skilled physiologist,
to denote the truth that it is only in the strongest frames that pain can
be pushed into its extremest torture. The heart of the grim woman was
instantly and thoroughly softened. She paused; she made him lean on her
arm; she wiped the drops from his brow; she addressed him in the most
soothing tones of pity. The spasm passed away suddenly as it does in
neuralgic agonies, and with it any gratitude or any remorse in the breast
of the sufferer.

"Yes," he said, "I will call on you; but meanwhile I am without a
farthing. Oh, do not fear that if you helped me now, I should again shun
you. I have no other resource left; nor have I now the spirit I once
had. I no longer now laugh at fatigue and danger."

"But will you swear by all that you yet hold sacred--if, alas! there be
aught which is sacred to you--that you will not again seek the company of
those men who are conspiring to entrap you into the hangman's hands?"

"Seek them again, the ungrateful cowardly blackguards! No, no; I promise
you that--solemnly; it is medical aid that I want; it is rest, I tell
you--rest, rest, rest." Arabella Crane drew forth her purse. "Take what
you will," said she gently. Jasper, whether from the desire to deceive
her, or because her alms were so really distasteful to his strange kind
of pride that he stinted to bare necessity the appeal to them, contented
himself with the third or fourth of the sovereigns that the purse
contained, and after a few words of thanks and promises, he left her
side, and soon vanished in the fog that grew darker and darker as the
night-like wintry day deepened over the silenced thoroughfares.

The woman went her way through the mists, hopeful--through the mists went