"Are you afraid of me? Is that it?" shouted the negress, almost touching the strained fingers with her mouth.
"Yes, yes!" broke from her tremulous lips, and Julia kept her eyes upon the woman in a wild stare. "I am afraid."
"This is gratitude," said the woman, fiercely. "I brought her to, and she looks at me as if I was a mad dog."
Julia cowered under the fiery glance with which these words were accompanied. This only exasperated her hideous friend, and with an angry grip of the teeth, she seized one little hand, forcing it away from the ear, that was on the instant filled with a fresh torrent of curses.
"Oh, don't! Pray, pray. It is dreadful to swear so!"
"Swear! Why, I didn't swear—not a word of it. Have been talking milk and water all the time just for your sake. Leave it all to these ladies, if I haven't!" said the woman, evidently impressed with the truth of her assertion, and appealing, with an air of simple confidence, to her fellow-prisoners: for profanity had become with her a fixed habit, and she was really unconscious of it.
A laugh of derision answered this singular appeal, and a dozen voices gave mocking assurance that there had been a mistake about the matter, saying,
"Oh, no! old Mag never swore in her life."
Tortured by the wild tumult, and driven to the very confines of insanity, Julia could scarcely forbear screaming for help. She started up, avoiding the negress with a desperate spring sidewise, and staggered toward the grated door. It seemed to her impossible to draw a deep breath, in the midst of those wretched beings!
"Mamma, mamma!" said a soft, sweet voice, from one of the cells, and as Julia turned her face, she saw through the narrow iron door-way the head of a child, bending eagerly forward and radiant with joyous surprise.