Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/215

 Ket to-night was on his cot in his cell, where lights were out, and where a prisoner, who was not to be tried to-morrow, snored upon the pallet overhead and a third partner of the cell slept below.

To-morrow night, although the trial would have begun, he would lie similarly in the jail cell and likewise throughout the trial for ten nights, perhaps, or for two weeks or possibly for more. But the end must come; and then?

Joan Daisy had laid the white cotton pad over the couch and now she was spreading the sheets; and smoothing them, she felt her quivering hands and her face go cold as she thought, "Would Ket lie down next in the death cell?"

If not, would it be upon a cot in the penitentiary upon which he would lie every night for all the rest of his life?

If not, if he won the verdict, if she, as she was sworn and determined to do, won his freedom for him, where would he sleep? Ina bed with her, under fine sheets like these?

With chill, quivering hands she smoothed the linen which his money had paid for. "I'll marry you, Kid, I'll marry you," he had whispered again and again, recently, through those holes of the visiting screen, "I'll marry you, Kid, when you get me free."

What kept her quivering and cold was the idea of the death cell, she thought; was the idea of that cell in Mr. Clarke's mind to-night?

Where was he? What was he doing on this night before the trial? she wondered without any intention to have sent her mind to him, as she made her bed. He had gone home, she had heard; but it was long ago, before Christmas. In fact, it was before Christmas when Mr. Elmen had told her that Mr. Clarke was again in the city; but she had not seen him since he went home, so she had been thinking of him at home in Clarke's Ferry, in that