"What did she say?"
"She? Nothing that I remember. 'As thee will, Joseph,' that was all, if anything. She had suspected it a long time. If I had stayed with her, I should have used that money,"—his fingers working with his white whiskers. "I've been near starving sometimes since. So I saved her from that,"—looking steadily at the Doctor, when he had finished speaking, but as if he did not see him.
"But your wife? Have you never seen her since?"
"Once." He spoke with difficulty now, but the clergyman suffered him to go on. "I don't know where she is now. I saw her once in the Fulton ferry-boat at New York; she had grown suddenly old and hard. She did not see me. I never thought she could grow so old as that. But I did what I could. I saved her from my life."
Dr. Bowdler looked into the man's eyes as a physician might look at a cancer.
"Since then you have not seen her, I understand you? Not wished to see her?"
There was a moment's pause.
"I have told you the facts of my life, Sir," said the old machinist, with a bow, his stubbly gray hair seeming to stand more erect; "the rest is of trifling interest."
Dr. Bowdler colored.
"Don't be unjust to me, my friend," he said, kindly. "I meant well."