Alvin Mead looked at her a second, then at Madelon with rough inquiry. “Who did ye say she was?” he growled.
“Parson Fair's daughter, the lady that's going to marry Burr Gordon.”
“I can't let but one of ye see him, and she can't stay more'n ten minutes,” said Alvin Mead, and moved aside, and Madelon and Dorothy entered.
They followed Alvin Mead down the icy, dark corridor to Burr's cell door. He unlocked it, and bade Dorothy enter. He cast a forbidding look at Madelon. “I will stand here,” she said with a strange meekness, almost as if her heart were broken; but when the jailer prepared to follow Dorothy into Burr's cell she caught him by the arm and tried to force him back, and cried out sharply that he should let her see him alone. “She is the girl he is going to marry, I tell you!” she said. “Let them see each other alone. You cannot come between two like that when they are in such trouble.”
Alvin Mead looked at her a second irresolutely. Then he stepped back in the corridor and locked the cell door. “That the gal? Thought ye was the one,” he said, with a half-chuckle, with coarse, sharp eyes upon her face.
“He is going to marry her,” Madelon repeated. She stood stiff and straight like a statue, and waited. Once, when Alvin made an impatient motion as though to open the door, she restrained him with such despairing eagerness that he drew back and looked at her wonderingly, and stood in surly silence awhile longer.
“She's got to come out now,” he said, at last. “I've got other things to tend to. Can't stay here no longer, nohow.” He unlocked the door and threw it open with a jerk. “Time's up!” he shouted, and Dorothy came out directly, almost as if she were running away. Alvin Mead clapped to the door with a great jar and locked it. Madelon, had she tried, could not have got a glimpse of Burr; but she did not try. She sprang at Dorothy Fair, and took her by the shoulders, and looked into her scared face with agonized questioning.
“Did—he confess?” she gasped out. “Did—he tell you, did he—tell you, Dorothy Fair?”
Dorothy shook her head in a mute terror that was almost horror. It seemed as if she would sink to the floor under Madelon's heavy hands. Alvin Mead stood staring at them.
“Didn't he—tell you—I was the one who—stabbed Lot? Didn't he—tell you?”