With the sweet calm of one who finds an unexpected duty to be performed, Katharine entered this place. Her very presence had a holy effect upon the suffering convicts. Cruelty only hardens sin, and in those days moral kindness to a convict was almost considered an offence against the law. Men were convicted to be punished, not with any idea of reformation, and being thrust utterly beyond the pale of mercy, grew desperate and reviled one another when the evil spirit tortured within them could find no other means of expression.

But the sweet goodness of this young woman, their fellow-prisoner, softened all this. She comforted them with her gentle ways; soothed down the profane spirit that gave out curses instead of groans, and dropped softer feelings into those uneasy souls as Heaven gives dew to weeds trampled along the dusty highway. She never preached, never exhorted them, never forced the prison Bible upon their rejection; but the simple promises of Scripture fell like poetry from her lips, at times when the hungry soul of some poor convict, not utterly lost, seemed to crave comfort at her hands. Sometimes, too, when a sick man, won by her goodness, would ask where she found the beautiful words with which she was striving to comfort him, Katharine would open the Bible and read aloud to convince him of their reality. Then some patient in the next cot would whisper her to read louder, and when her silvery voice was lifted those sick men would turn wearily on the hard pillows and listen.

It is no great hardship to read or pray with the sick. Many a dainty person can be found to perform such duties punctiliously; but to work for the sick, to watch with them, wait on them, and with little means supply great wants—this is a noble work even for the patience and endurance of a woman. This is charity in its perfect work, mingling prayers, kindness, and stern labor in one beautiful phase of Christianity. This work Katharine performed so well that the fiend which she found brooding over the pillow of many a wretched fellow-creature, stole away under the sound of her comfortings, and a pitying angel came in his place. This was a work of slow growth, but alas! Katharine had plenty of time—eight long years.

You ask me if this young girl was unhappy in her dreary life, and I answer no. Those who confer great good on humanity by self-sacrifice, cannot be made utterly miserable. To such hope never dies. No, I say again, the slumber which Katharine found in her pauses of rest was very sweet. At such times the dreary sound of those water-drops trickling down the walls of her prison, seemed like the bell-like murmurs of a fountain, around which a baby child—one that always came in her dreams—was hovering and waiting for her to finish her work in that prison and see how beautiful the world was beyond it.

I cannot pause now to give the details of her strange life, or tell you how many touching events rose each day to interest her best feelings. The prisoners, young and old, began to look upon her with affection. Even the women, whose hearts are not always easy of access to a sister woman, received her little kindnesses, when she found power to offer them, with something like gratitude. All this won upon the officers of the institution. With her they began to enforce the discipline of the prison less rigidly than they had ever done before; employed her in lighter tasks; gave their own needle-work to her deft fingers; and frequently supplied her with better food than was awarded to her fellow sufferers. She received every favor with thankfulness, but took no benefit to herself. The food which she appeared to carry off and consume in private, went to the nourishing of some poor invalid, whose grateful eyes thanked her and told of gentler feelings growing up in his heart.

Thus, through her favor with the prison officers and her influence with the convicts, this young woman won for herself a power of good, which those terrible walls had never witnessed since their foundation.

CHAPTER LXXI.
THE SWEATING OVEN.

Down in the depths of those prison mines many a terrible scene took place at which humanity shuddered. Once huddled under ground and sealed in with the massive iron bars that crossed that small trap-door, little care was needed for the safety of the prisoners. So, like wild cattle hustled into a pound, they were left to their own vicious instincts, and those often led to riot and revolt. Sometimes the terrible monotony of this life was broken by a new gang of prisoners, who, shocked and outraged in every manly feeling by the degradation heaped upon them, fiercely resisted the rules which levelled them below the common brutes of the field, and, like wild animals just lassoed on the prairies, turned fiercely upon their tormentors.

Cases of horrible cruelty often occurred in the prison; Katharine knew of it only from the fierce noises that echoed through her cell at night, and by the frightened faces that passed before her during the next day. It was enough to shock the most hardened human soul, to know that any of those terrible means of punishment, invented as the curse of our prisons, was in progress. The very idea was enough to drive the blood from Katharine's heart. But she was helpless—had not even the power of protest—all she could do was to turn her pitying eyes on the poor wretch when his sufferings were over, and thus prove that compassion existed even in that terrible place. Usually these scenes of punishment ended in the hospital, then her sweet ministry made itself deeply felt, and many a hard heart yielded itself to her kindness which the most bitter correction had failed to reach.