"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet way; "but I can't go to chapel."
"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.
"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.
"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison are children of the devil!" she said.
"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is right."
"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."
Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work again after three days, that being the longest time the rules allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.
Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said. "I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service. At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the sick, and that troublesome protégé of hers. "I won't go near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.
Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan. Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings" was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up, while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the first sign of submission or of fainting.
The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down his face.