“You remember I told you once of the haunted cave where the people went, and heard the sweetest strains of music, but which was soon broken into by a hideous tumult. I often visit the place now in my dreams, or in my fancy, and it has a new attraction: Some one is lost there, and there is no hope of a rescue. This is such a lonely place that sometimes when I lie here through the day waiting for you, I visit the place when I am awake. I am very familiar with the rugged path which leads through the dark ravine to its mouth, and when the day is bad I never fail to go. Although it is horrible, there is a certain fascination about it I am unable to resist.
“When last I visited it, I did not hear the music at all, but instead some one crying, which was drowned by the usual tumult. When this had subsided, I heard the same voice distinctly crying, ‘Help! help! I am lost,’ which so excited me that I awoke. Since then, every time I fall asleep I visit the cave, and after sitting a long while in silence, suddenly I hear the same agonizing cry, ‘Help! help! I am lost.’ Then come such pitiful sobs that I awake again. I have come to regard the man lost in the cave as myself, and while waiting to hear him call I have tried to invent a plan for his rescue, and wondered if you and Barker would not help me. Perhaps this is a premonition of my future; it may be that after I am dead, it will be my punishment to wander in a dark and gloomy place, unable to die, but forever calling, ‘Help! help! I am lost.’
“I have thought, too, that it is possible, when I am sick and tired from wandering about and calling for help, always expecting that rescue is near at hand, that suddenly a light so great as to dazzle my poor eyes will appear; that I shall be permitted to see a beautiful place, with running streams and shady paths under the trees, and that I shall realize that it is the eternal city.
“As I look, Mateel and Bragg, attired in raiment befitting their new condition, will appear, happy in their perfected love. My imprisonment in that awful place will have unmanned me so much that I shall cry to them, ‘Help! help! I am lost!’ but they will not be permitted to hear, and when I stagger toward the blessed light, the figures will disappear, and I shall fall on my face in the darkness.”
He always talked of the cave and the vision in such a mournful, hopeless way, that it greatly affected me, but he would soon rally, and become cheerful again, as though I had a right to expect that of him in return for my attention. He talked in this strain a great deal, and seemed to take more interest in it than in anything else, or it may have been a fascination which he could not avoid. Every evening when I came in he had a new experience with the cave or the vision to relate, and I shudder yet when I remember his descriptions of the man who was always wandering in the dark and awful place his fancy had created, and who was always calling for help which never came.
Although he was as much a mystery to me as ever, I never looked at him that I could not see his love for me. I did no more for him than anyone would have done under the same circumstances, but he talked about it a great deal, and expressed his gratitude that he had one friend in the world, in spite of his disgrace and crime.
Very often I assured him of the pleasure it gave me to be of service to him, and the keen regrets I felt that I could not do more, and at these times he turned his head away, and I believed that tears were in his eyes. I can never explain the sympathy and affection I felt for him while he was in prison, for, knowing him as I did, I could not help feeling that he was justified, and when I saw that he took no interest in the plans I proposed for his escaping the consequences, hope died within me, and I felt that when the time came, he would acknowledge his guilt, and ask me as his last request to attend him on the scaffold. Further than his remark that he would give his own life for the one he had taken, he but barely mentioned the tragedy in any way, and seemed only to be waiting to keep his oath.
Inasmuch as the coroner’s jury had not yet assembled to listen to evidence in the case, the only witness being too ill to attend, I could not conjecture what course he would adopt when called upon to express himself, and I was afraid to ask him. He would not see the attorneys I had selected to advise me, saying in excuse that he was not ready, or that whatever I did represented him, so that I seemed to be the culprit rather than Jo, for I worried more about it, and was oftener in despair.
Only once during his confinement did he refer to the causes leading to the tragedy in the woods. I had been reading to him until far into the night, with the light between us as we lay on the rough prison cots, when he interrupted me by inquiring:—
“Are you quite sure that you fully forgive me for my desperate crime?”