When Jack entered the cell, she was talking to herself in the muttering unconnected way peculiar to her distracted condition; but, after her eye had rested on him some time, the fixed expression of her features relaxed, and a smile crossed them. This smile was more harrowing even than her former rigid look.
"You are an angel," she cried, with a look beaming with delight.
"Rather a devil," groaned her son, "to have done this."
"You are an angel, I say," continued the poor maniac; "and my Jack would have been like you, if he had lived. But he died when he was a child—long ago—long ago—long ago."
"Would he had done so!" cried Jack.
"Old Van told me if he grew up he would be hanged. He showed me a black mark under his ear, where the noose would be tied. And so I'll tell you what I did—"
And she burst into a laugh that froze Jack's blood in his veins.
"What did you do?" he asked, in a broken voice.
"I strangled him—ha! ha! ha!—strangled him while he was at my breast—ha! ha!"—And then with a sudden and fearful change of look, she added, "That's what has driven me mad, I killed my child to save him from the gallows—oh! oh! One man hanged in a family is enough. If I'd not gone mad, they would have hanged me."
"Poor soul!" ejaculated her son.