“But by her persuasion. I feel sure of it. Ah, I was wrong to think she had forgotten me. Ask her for her forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness!” said North, recalling the scene in the prison. “What have you done to need her forgiveness?”
“I doubted her,” said Rufus Dawes. “I thought her ungrateful and treacherous. I thought she delivered me again into the bondage from whence I had escaped. I thought she had betrayed me—betrayed me to the villain whose base life I saved for her sweet sake.”
“What do you mean?” asked North. “You never spoke to me of this.”
“No, I had vowed to bury the knowledge of it in my own breast—it was too bitter to speak.”
“Saved his life!”
“Ay, and hers! I made the boat that carried her to freedom. I held her in my arms, and took the bread from my own lips to feed her!”
“She cannot know this,” said North in an undertone.
“She has forgotten it, perhaps, for she was but a child. But you will remind her, will you not? You will do me justice in her eyes before I die? You will get her forgiveness for me?”
North could not explain why such an interview as the convict desired was impossible, and so he promised.