“Oh, have you one for me?” asked Marion, quickly. “I am Marion Marlowe, I’m in the linen-room at present.”
“You were at the ‘medical,’” said the young man as he handed her a letter. “There ain’t much danger of any of us losing track of you, Miss Marlowe.”
Marion looked at him quickly, and an admiring glance rewarded her.
“Prettiest girl in the building,” he said, blandly. “Every man on the Island is in love with you, Miss Peaches.”
“Convicts and all?” asked Marion, laughing.
“If they ain’t, then they are in the right place,” was the answer; “but I guess if they wasn’t they wouldn’t all of ’em be breaking rules to look at you! Don’t you remember that fellow that got shot, Miss Marlowe?”
Marion shuddered as she recalled the terrible scene, and as she walked slowly away her face paled a little.
It had happened during the first week of her stay on the Island, and ever since then she had been trying hard to forget it. Then a vision of the black-souled Lawson’s tragic end flitted across her brain and she put up both hands as if to ward off such pictures.
“That poor convict that jumped into the water and was shot is to be envied,” she whispered sadly. “He went down out of sight beneath the smiling waters, but Lawson, the abductor, goes to Potter’s Field. It is right! It is just! He richly deserves it!”