Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/64

 eyes seemed drawn as by a magnet to an article made conspicuous by having three or four headlines in large type: "Desperate attempt to escape from Dartmoor Prison," "Several warders badly wounded," "The prisoner killed."

Yes, there could be no doubt about it: the prisoner who had made so murderous an attempt to regain his forfeited liberty was Gilbert Middleton, the father of my newspaper-boy, the husband of the martyrised woman now trembling before my eyes; and that, in defending themselves, the warders had inflicted injuries upon him that had caused his death.

With a terrified gesture Mrs. Middleton held out her hand for the paper, and, hardly conscious of what I was doing, I gave it up to her. A bare glance sufficed to assure her that she was a widow. Then, with incredible strength, she snatched up her boy, and enveloped him in her embraces, her uncontrollable sobs mingling with his. I did not then pause to analyse, or in any way even to account for my feelings; but I was sensible, on leaving the mother and son to the privacy of their affection and sorrow, that I carried away with me a strange sort of satisfaction, both because Mrs. Middleton was for ever released from further contact with a man who had filled her life so far with misery, and because I knew, as well as if her heart had been my own, that the hour of her girlish désillusion had struck early in the days of her wedded life, and that she had never for a moment loved him afterwards.

By the employment of a little diplomacy, I prevailed upon her to permit me to help her to live until the state of her health enabled her to find employment of some kind. Jack I at once took into my service, as I had at first proposed to do. By good fortune, I was, after a while, enabled to do something better still for both mother and son: by my persuasion, her father (now a widower), who had known but little of her sufferings during the years of their estrangement, welcomed her kindly back to the hearth of her childhood.

Two years have passed since then; the youthful roundness, if not all the girlish rose-hue, has returned to Mrs. Middleton's cheeks. I think she is the most beautiful woman I have ever looked upon; I am sure she is the best; and her Jack and I are as much to each other as any father and son can be; and some day, perhaps

How strange—how solemn, it may be—such happiness would seem, in the memory of all that had gone before it!