fancy woman--it's nothing but nat'ral that he should want to get her
out of such an old rat-hole as this, where many's the fine-timbered
creature, both he and she, that has lain to rot, and has never got out
of the old trap at all, first or last'----'How so?' I interrupted him;
'surely they don't detain the corpses of prisoners?' 'Ay, but mind you
--put case that he or that she should die in this rat-trap before
sentence is past, why then the prison counts them as its own children,
and buries them in its own chapel--that old stack of pigeon-holes that
you see up yonder to the right hand.' So then, after all, thought I, if
my poor Agnes should, in her desolation and solitary confinement to
these wretched walls, find her frail strength give way--should the
moral horrors of her situation work their natural effect upon her
health, and she should chance to die within this dungeon, here within
this same dungeon will she lie to the resurrection, and in that case
her prison-doors have already closed upon her for ever. The man, who
perhaps had some rough kindness in his nature, though tainted by the
mercenary feelings too inevitably belonging to his situation, seemed to
guess at the character of my ruminations by the change of my
countenance, for he expressed some pity for my being 'in so much
trouble;' and it seemed to increase his respect for me that this
trouble should be directed to the case of a woman, for he appeared to
have a manly sense of the peculiar appeal made to the honor and
gallantry of man, by the mere general fact of the feebleness and the
dependence of woman. I looked at him more attentively in consequence of
the feeling tone in which he now spoke, and was surprised that I had
not more particularly noticed him before; he was a fine looking,
youngish man, with a bold Robin-hood style of figure and appearance;
and, morally speaking, he was absolutely transfigured to my eyes by the
effect worked upon him for the moment, through the simple calling up of
his better nature. However, he recurred to his cautions about the peril