“I will watch,” said Marion, simply, and then the carriage stopped. Once more Marion was admitted to the little hospital dock, going back to her duties among the city’s unfortunate. As she reached the deck of the Thomas Brennan, some one stepped out of the pilot house to greet her.
It was young Dr. Brookes, on his way to the Prison Hospital.
CHAPTER IX.
MARION WITNESSES A QUEER SIGHT.
“Big Belle, the Confidence Queen,” was a very versatile woman. At liberty, she was noted for the variety of her accomplishments, and in prison walls she was equally useful both in her cell and in the workroom.
But this strange woman’s greatest delight was in the care of the sick, and as she passed from cot to cot in the prison hospital both her hand and her voice were as gentle as a mother’s.
She was a large, fine-looking woman, with brilliant black eyes, but the coarse prison garb did not enhance the beauty of either face or figure.
Belle had “done time” at the “Isle de Blackwell” before, so she felt very much at home in her present occupation.
There was not a rule or regulation about the prison that she did not know, and if she ever longed to break one of them there was no indication of it in her manner.
Rather, it seemed to her associates that Belle was merely “biding her time,” and, according to all accounts, a goodly portion of her ill-gotten gains was steadily drawing interest in various banks in anticipation of her coming.