Yes; a woman was shrouded in that white drapery—a fair young girl, so fair and so young that the sailor's heart melted with pity at the first glance. How still and white she was. How like some of the Madonnas he had seen in the churches and cathedrals of foreign parts; those hands were folded under the cloud-like sleeves. She was very slender and frail. Rice could trace the blue veins on her temples, and see the quiver of her hands under the white drapery. A hideous thing was coiled, like a great ash-colored serpent, around that delicate neck, and fell writhing along the scaffold.
Rice uttered a cry of horror; something in that face smote all the strength from his heart. The sight of that rope made him tremble like a little child. The meek eyelids drooping over the shrinking agony of those eyes, the mouth parting now and then from its tremulous pressure, the small feet resting so helplessly on the scaffold. It was a pitiful sight.
I cannot explain why that craving desire to know who the criminal was, seized upon the strong man, whose face the unhappy creature would not have known had she lifted those heavy eyes? "Who is it? why is she here? will no one tell me?"
An old woman, or the shadow of an old woman, who leaned against the timbers of the gallows, looked up at this outcry, and her eyes settled on his face. Then her poor withered hands were slowly lifted, and fell helplessly into his.
"My son!"
"Mother—my mother, and looking so!"
"Hush!" she said, lifting her trembling finger, and pointing to the girl on the scaffold. "It is our Katharine."
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE MOTHER AND SON.
Rice did not speak—he did not move—a weight of blood fell back on his heart, turning it to stone. He felt like a drowning man, with the billows of a turbulent ocean heaving around him.