“O, yes, every day I have a dreadful feeling about them. I in one way am responsible for their captivity. I vowed that I would do all I could to mitigate it. The first few days, as I told you when we last met, they would have nothing to say to me. Then they began to thaw slightly. Little by little they seemed to understand that I had their good at heart.”
“Did you say anything to them about the other kidnaping case?”
“Yes, but not until three days ago. I told them that their trial would soon come off; that if they were to give any information about the stolen child it might influence public opinion in their favor. I could get nothing out of them. They flatly denied all knowledge of the missing boy, but at the very first instant of my mentioning the affair I caught a gleam of intelligence in the eye of one of them. She knew something about it. So what do you think I did, dear Judge?”
The Judge pushed away a pouter that was puffing and swelling out on his shoulder. “Well,” he said, mischievously, “your actions are sometimes unexpected.”
She laughed gayly. “To be true to my reputation, they were in this case. I telegraphed to New York to the little widow. I said, ‘Come to me, and possibly I may give you news of your boy.’ The poor little woman actually flew here. I wish you could have seen her, Judge. Such a teary, weary, eerie sort of a widow. All big eyes and veil, and so consumed with sorrow, which one could not wonder at.”
“Did you take her to the jail?”
“I did. I confronted her with those two young women. I had them both brought into the same room. I made no explanation, either to them or to the widow, whose name is Mrs. Tralee. When the two women, or girls—for neither of them is much over twenty—came in I abruptly pointed to them, and said to Mrs. Tralee, ‘Those girls can tell you where to get information about your lost boy.’
“It was pitiful to see that little widow’s face, Judge. Just imagine her—alone in the world, one pet boy, and he snatched from her. She gave me one look, one terrible look, as if to say, ‘Are you deceiving me?’ I shook my head solemnly. Those girls either knew where her boy was or could tell us who did know. I would have staked my life on it.
“Mrs. Tralee wasted no time in preliminaries. She fell right on her knees before them. She, a rich woman, cultured and refined and exquisitely dressed, took those degraded creatures in her outstretched arms, she pleaded with them as for her soul’s salvation.
“It was dreadful, Judge. I never heard anything more affecting in my life. I just stood and cried like a baby, and I heard a sniffing behind the door where the jailer stood, and when we came out I noticed his eyes were all red.