Minnie Raynor dropped like a flower before the scythe of the mower.
All was confusion. The mother rushed shrieking from the house, men came from the street, the guard from the prison. There was a moment when he might have escaped, but Jeffries did not take advantage of it. Throwing himself down by the child, he called upon her in agony, kissed her pale lips, and chafed her chilling hands. “O my God! my God!” he muttered.
They surrounded and bound him.
“I won’t try to run away, I swear I won’t!” he cried wildly. “Don’t mind me; see to her. Go for a doctor. Do something for her quickly. O God! O God! Open your eyes, my angel! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would rather stay here all my life, or be hanged to-day, than hurt you, my darling!”
They tore him away from her, and carried him back to prison. There they searched him, but found nothing but a lock of silken hair in his breast, done up in a paper.
“She gave it to me,” he said piteously, but made no remonstrance when they did not return it to him.
“Only see how she is, and tell me,” he begged. “You know I’ve got to hang now, and you know that I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of her head for my life. I didn’t mean to strike any one, except in self-defence. You can’t blame me for trying to escape. It was only natural. But tell me how she is.”
The deputy looked at him fixedly.
“The child never breathed after you struck her,” he said.