"Then I will leave you to your wife, while I go with these boys on their merciful errand," said the Judge. "Come, my lads."
"One moment," said the Mayor, taking Joseph by the hand, while he led him away from the group, and whispered in his ear. His lips were pale with intense feeling, as he listened for the answer.
"My name is Joseph Esmond, that is his name also."
"I knew it—I was sure of it," muttered Farnham, and he sat down in an easy chair, and watched the boy wistfully as he left the room.
God had reached the conscience of that man at last, and his granite heart was breaking up with the force of old memories and sudden remorse. That day, his past and present life had been linked forcibly together. The shock made him look inward, and he saw clearly that the hard, barren track of politics had led him to become a murderer. The law did not recognize this, but his soul did.
CHAPTER XIII
JANE CHESTER AND THE STRANGER.
Disease, thou art a fearful thing
When, half disarmed by household care,
Thou sweepest with thy poison wing,
O'er the loved forms to which we cling,
And bending to the sweet and fair,
Leav'st thy corroding mildew there!
But if thou treadst the plundered track,
Where poverty has swept before,
Leaving his victim on the rack,
Then, then, thou art a demon black,
That steals within the poor man's door.
Crushing his hopes forevermore!
And Jane Chester—where was she while strangers were bearing away the husband of her youth to his lone grave? Amid her fever that day, amid all her delirium, one idea had been vivid and prominent before her. The woman's heart remained true to its anchorage amid the storm and fire of approaching ship-fever. Long after reason had failed, the love that was stronger than reason told her that some great evil was befalling her husband. Time was to her a vague idea; she thought that he had been gone for weeks—that he was seeking for her and the children along the wharves and in the dim alleys of the city, and that the Mayor had forbidden him to come home. She would find him—she would take food and clean garments to him in the street. He should not wander there so poverty-stricken and neglected, without her. In defiance of the Mayor, in defiance of the whole world, she would go to him.