"I don't understand you. What can you do in town?"
"I can bear the divinest of tidings—I can tell Alf that Millie loves him."
She stood looking down, and, bending over her, I kissed her hair, and oh, the heaven of that moment, at the gate, in the dawn; and oh, the thrilling perfume of her hair, damp with the dew brushed from the vine and the leaf of the spice-wood bush. And there, without a word, I left her, her white hands clasped on her bosom; and over the roadway I galloped with a message on my lips and incense in my soul.
CHAPTER XVI.
The sun was an hour above the tree-tops when I rode up to the livery-stable, and the town was lazily astir. Merchants were sprinkling the brick pavements in front of their stores, and on the public square was a bon-fire of trash swept from the court-house. I hastened to the jail, and for the first time the jailer hesitated when I applied for admission. My eagerness, apparent to every one, appeared to be mistrusted by him, and he shook his head. I told him that he might go in with me, that my mission was simply to deliver a message.
"The man has been sentenced," said he, "and I don't know what good a message can do him. I am ordered to be very strict. Some time ago a man was in this jail, sentenced to the penitentiary, but he didn't go—a friend came in and left him some pizen. And are you sure you ain't got no pizen about you."
"You may search me."
"But I don't know pizen when I see it. Man's got a right to kill himself, I reckon, but he ain't got no right to rob me of my position as jailer, and that's what it would do. Write down your message and I'll take it to him."
"That would take too long. The judge has granted him a new trial and surely he wouldn't want to kill himself now."