“Bangs’ll git ye off if they do,” he said, with a low chuckle. “He’s promised to bring me off wid flyin’ colors.”
“But—but—he—he’s dead—Bangs is; they’ve lynched him, don’t ye know?”
“Niver heard a wurrud o’ it. Whan?”
“Four days ago.”
“An’ that’s the fuss they wuz makin’ down the strate whan I heerd ’em shoutin’ an’ yellin’, loike so manny divils! I axed the jailor what all the noise wuz about, but he answered me niver a wurrud—jist walked away wid his head up an’ his mouth toight shut. An’ here I’ve been a wonderin’ an’ scoldin’ bekase Bangs didn’t show hisself an’ lat me know how the bizniss was progressin’; how fast he wuz gittin’ ready to prove till the coort an’ jury that Phalim O’Rourke wuz as innercent o’ that attimpt on the ould man’s loife as an unborn babby.”
“But he’s dead, and who’ll clear ye now?” she asked, mournfully.
“I’ll have to break jail, an’ ye must help me, B’lindy.”
“If I only could,” she said, and her voice was weak and trembling; “but I’m half dead now; I can hardly stand fer weakness. I’ve been hidin’ in a damp, dark, dirty cave—the one you told me of—an’ I’m nearly starved; haven’t had enough to eat since—since that night on the raft. If ’twas light enough for you to see me, you’d never know me; I’m wasted to skin an’ bone, an’ my clo’es are all rags an’ dirt.”
“Did I iver hear the loike!” he exclaimed. “Well, niver moind, me jewel; whan I’m a free man agin I’ll soon have ye a wearin’ yer foine silks an’ satins an’ goold ornamints, an’ drivin’ in yer kerridge, mabbe, loike anny lady in the land.”
She sighed despairingly. “But you’ll never be able to break out o’ this; an’ there’s nobody now to defend ye on yer trial. They say ’twas some o’ your band that finished Himes; they say ’twas by your orderin’. Is that so?”