“He’ll be sorry some day,” she said on the morning before the trial, as she sat low of spirit and alone in the little cottage.
“Poor Abel! he’s very bitter and cruel; poor—Yes, do you want me?”
“Genlum give me this to give you,” said a boy.
Mary excitedly caught at the letter the boy handed to her, and opening it with trembling hands, managed with no little difficulty to spell out its contents.
They were very short and laboriously written in a large schoolboy-like hand for her special benefit by one who knew her deficiencies of education.
“It is not too late yet. Abel will be tried to-morrow and condemned unless a piece of sea-weed is received to-night.”
“And I used to love him and believe in him!” she cried at last passionately, as her hot indignation at last mastered her, and she tore the letter in pieces with her teeth, spat the fragments upon the ground, and stamped upon them with every mark of contempt and disgust.
Then a change came over her, and she sank sobbing upon a stool, to burst forth into a piteous wail.
“Oh, Abel!—brother!—it is all my doing. I have sent you to your death!”