“For inciting prisoners to escape.”
“Ned’s dead,” with a sneer.
“Yes, he’s dead, and”—he watched her narrowly, although he seemed absorbed in buttoning his coat—“they say he haunts his old cell, as if he’d lost something. Maybe it’s the letter you folded up small enough to go in the seam of a coat. I’ve got that.” He saw that she was watching him in turn, and that she was nervous. “Ned’s dead, poor fellow, true enough; but—the girl at Barber & Glasson’s ain’t dead.”
She began to fumble with her gloves, peeling them off and rolling them into balls. He thought to himself that the chances were that she was superstitious.
“Look here,” he said, sharply, “have an end of this nonsense; you get off at the next place, and never bother that old lady again, or—I will have you arrested, and you can try for yourself whether Ned’s cell is haunted.”
For a brief space they eyed each other, she in an access of impotent rage, he stolid as the carving of the seat. The car shivered; the great wheels moved more slowly. “Decide,” said he; not imperatively—dryly, without emotion of any sort. He kept his mild eyes on her.
“It wasn’t his mother I meant to tell; it was that girl—that nice girl he wanted to marry—”
“You make me tired,” said the sheriff. “Are you going, or am I to make a scene and take you? I don’t care much.”
She slipped her hand behind her into her pocket.
The sheriff laughed, and grasped one wrist.