“You will have compassion on this poor, sweet victim; you will permit her to escape and reach some foreign country in safety, and in after years, when her innocence shall be discovered, you will rejoice to remember that you saved her blameless life from a felon’s death!”
Anderson mournfully shook his head, saying, “My God! I am not fit for my hard duties.”
“No, you are not hard enough for the stern duties of a governor of a gaol. Your humane nature must suffer much in constantly witnessing the very worst forms of human woe, crime, remorse and punishment, and the wide ruin and unspeakable misery they bring upon the innocent as well as the guilty,” said Malcolm, gently.
“True, true! my heart has been wrung daily, for years, in witnessing the wretchedness of prisoners and their friends. But what would you have—some must be gaolers?”
“But not men like you—you suffer too much in the performance of your duties. Come, listen to me! be persuaded to leave this abode of sin and misery. Let Eudora escape! take the compensation that her grateful friends will offer you, and go to some lovely, quiet, rural home, in some foreign country, where you can live with your wife and child amid the sweet influence of nature, and with the almost Divine consciousness of having saved a human life! Come—speak—consent! urged Malcolm persuasively.
“I dare not! oh, Heaven! I dare not commit a breach of trust—I dare not do a dishonorable deed!” said Anderson, wiping the streaming perspiration from his brow.
“Remember her dead father, and all his brotherly kindness to you, and pity his orphan child in her unspeakable wretchedness. Think how dear life is at her tender age; how hard it is to die at seventeen, and such an awful death—a death of public ignominy! How her young heart must shrink in anguish and affright. Think how sweet the offer of life would be to her; how her spirit would leap with joy to meet it; how she would bless you; how she would thank you; how she would pray for you through all the days of the life that she would owe to you;—and how you would rejoice to feel that the debt of gratitude to your benefactor had been abundantly paid off by saving the life of his child, who, but for you, would be mouldering in a premature, dishonored grave! Anderson, think how, at this very moment, the spirit of her sainted father bends down from the Heaven of Heavens to hear what you shall say!” concluded Malcolm, solemnly.
“Oh, Montrose, speak no more! All this that you have said my own heart has urged more forcibly than you could speak! But I must not do this thing. I must not stain my soul with dishonor!” exclaimed the gaoler, and then, man though he was, he burst into tears, went and leaned his elbows on his desk, dropped his face upon his open palms, and wept bitterly.
But not for this would Malcolm Montrose abandon the cause of Eudora.
He went to the side of Anderson, put his arm caressingly over his shoulder, and continued his pleadings with all the impassioned eloquence of love and grief. Whether he was successful will be seen.