"No, she's dead. We have another one now, Sir."
"Who is she?"
The jailer hesitated and then said, "Don't you know, your Honour?"
Stowell looked up quickly and a stifling recollection of Fenella's last words ("If you have to go to prison, I will follow you") came surging back on him.
"Is it .... is it .... she?" he faltered.
"Yes."
That night, when Stowell's supper was brought to him, he sent it away untouched. But the morning broke fair on his sleepless eyes, for he had made up his mind what to do.
A pale ray of reflected sunshine from the eastern wall of the court-house was on the upper part of his cell, and he could hear the voices of children who were playing on the shore.
He asked for a candle, pen and ink and paper, and sat down to write a letter.
"My DEAR FENELLA,—They have told me what you have done and I cannot bear to think of it. When it became necessary to do what I did, I knew I should have to give up all hope of you, and since doing so I have suffered as few men can ever have suffered before. But if you remain in this place I shall never know another hour's sleep by night or rest by day. I shall feel that in surrendering to Justice I was not really doing a courageous act, as perhaps I thought, but a cowardly one, because I was throwing half the burden of my sins on to you, who are innocent of any of them. That thought would break my heart."