at the jailer spoke again, and with a lighter heart.

"I am glad you're in luck this time,--for you are. You don't know who
is coming to take the charge,--come, I mean, for they are all in, and
settled. That's Montier, the little girl's father. He is a drummer, and
a little of everything else. It's his horn that you hear sometimes. And
you know Elizabeth, who was always so kind about the flowers. His wife,
too, she's a pretty woman, and kind as kind can be."

"What have they come here for?" asked the prisoner, amazed.

"I'll tell you," said Laval, more generous than he had designed to be;
but he knew how he should wish, when the sea rolled between him and
Foray, that he had spoken every comfortable word in his knowledge to
this man; he knew it by his recent experiences of remorse in reference
to his buried wife, and was wise enough to profit by the
knowledge;--"I'll tell you. It's on your account. They were afraid
somebody that didn't know how long you have been here, and how much you
have suffered, would get the place; so they all came together and asked
for it. They had a pretty little house up nigh the barracks, but they
gave it up to come here. You'll see Montier to-night. For when I go
back to your room with you, then I'm going off to--to"----he hesitated,
for foremost among his instructions was this, that he should remain
silent about his purpose of returning home; he was not to go as a
messenger for the prisoner across the ocean to their native land----"to
my business," he said. "If you'll be kind to him, you will make
something by it. I thought I would tell you,--so, when you saw a
strange face in your room, you would know what it meant without
asking."

"I thank you," said the prisoner; and to the jailer it now seemed as if
the figure of the man beside him grew in height and strength,--as if he
trod the ground less feebly and listlessly while he spoke these words.
A divine consolation must have strengthened him even then, or he could
never have added with such emphasis, "Wherever you go, take this my
ass