Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/259

Rh light (for she had shut the door), and cried out to God to forgive the most selfish woman in all the world.

She had thought of herself, and not of Tom. She had talked about herself, and not about Tom. In her selfishness she had forgotten what she had brought him; and a medicine-bottle of pilfered milk and rum was at his parched lips in an instant. She made him drink of it, and drink deep; and mutton sandwiches, deliciously cut and salted, she put between his teeth with her own fingers, bite after bite, as though he had been her infant. And all the time she was railing at herself for forgetting this and being the most selfish woman in the world; while he ate and drank from her tender hand and never said a word.

But when this was over he took that hand in his; and so they sat, as it seemed for hours, in a thin rain of filtered moonshine. Still his eyes were steadily downcast the whole time—thus they missed the happy tears in hers.

At last he spoke, and it was terrible, for she could not understand a word; then he coughed and tried again, and said, “God bless you, Peggy—only there isn’t one in New South Wales!” And that left them both silent, and the girl grieving openly, for almost as long again.

Then he said quite quietly:—

“You know I’ve been in the condemned cell, Peggy. But it was nothing to this. My God, it was nothing to this!”

Peggy pressed his hand.

“The condemned cell at Newgate,” he went on. “I was there up to the very last night, and heard the people taking their places to see me swing. Well, that night was nothing to this. And if they had hanged me in the