Lancaster was reached on the second evening after he left Liverpool. He could not travel fast nor long together, for he was not yet completely strong. He secured a bed in a low part of the town, at a public-house, and on the morning of the third day presented himself at the prison door. After some formalities he was admitted, and taken by a warder along a corridor with whitewashed walls to the condemned cell where Caillaud lay. The warder looked through a grating, and said to Zachariah that a visitor was already there. Two were not allowed at a time, but he would tell the prisoner that somebody was waiting for him.
“Let’s see, what’s your name?” said the warder. Then it suddenly struck him that he had been fool enough, in the excitement of entering the prison, to sign his real name in the book. There was no help for it now, and he repeated that it was Coleman.
“Ah yes, Coleman,” echoed the man, in a manner which was significant.
“Who is the other visitor?” said Zachariah.
“It is his daughter.”
His first thought was to ask to be let in, but his next was, that it would be profanity to disturb the intercourse of father and child, and he was silent. However, he had been announced, and Caillaud appeared at the grating begging permission for his friend to enter. It was at first refused; but presently something seemed to strike the jailer, for he relented with a smile.
“You won’t want to come again?” he observed interrogatively.
“No; that is to say, I think not.”
“No; that is to say, I think not,” he repeated slowly, word for word, adding, “I shall have to stay with you while you are together.”
Zachariah entered, the warder locking the door behind him, and seating himself on the edge of the bedstead, where he remained during the whole of the interview, jingling his keys and perfectly unmoved.
The three friends spoke not a word for nearly five minutes. Zachariah was never suddenly equal to any occasion which made any great demands upon him. It often made him miserable that it was so. Here he was, in the presence of one whom he had so much loved, and who was about to leave him forever, and he had nothing to say. That could have been endured could he but have felt and showed his feeling, could he but have cast himself upon his neck and wept over him, but he was numbed and apparently immovable. It was Caillaud who first broke the silence.
“It appears I shall have to console you rather than you me; believe me, I care no more about dying, as mere dying, than I do about walking across this room. There are two things which disturb me—the apprehension of some pain, and bidding goodbye to Pauline and you, and two or three more.”
There was, after all, but just a touch needed to break up Zachariah and melt him.
“You are happier than I,” he cried. “Your work is at an end. No more care for things done or undone; you are discharged, and nobly discharged, with honour. But as for me!”
“With honour!” and Caillaud smiled. “To be hung like a forger of banknotes—not even to be shot—and then to be forgotten. Forgotten utterly! This does not happen to be one of those revolutions which men remember.”
“No! men will not remember,” said Pauline, with an elevation of voice and manner almost oratorical. “Men will not remember, but there is a memory in the world which forgets nothing.”
“Do you know,” said Caillaud, “I have always loved adventure, and at times I look forward to death with curiosity and interest, just as if I were going to a foreign country.”
“Tell me,” said Zachariah, “if there is anything I can do.”
“Nothing. I would ask you to see that Pauline comes to no harm, but she can take care of herself. I have nothing to give you in parting. They have taken everything from me.”
“What a brute I am! I shall never see you again, and I cannot speak,” sobbed Zachariah.
“Speak! What need is there of speaking? What is there which can be said at such a time? To tell you the truth, Coleman, I hardly cared about having you here. I did not want to imperil the calm which is now happily upon me; we all of us have something unaccountable and uncontrollable in us, and I do not know how soon it may wake in me. But I did wish to see you, in order that your mind might be at peace about me. Come, goodbye!”
Caillaud put his hand on Zachariah’s shoulder.
“This will not do,” he said. “For my sake forbear. I can face what I have to go through next Monday if am not shaken. Come, Pauline, you too, my child, must leave me for a bit.”
Zachariah looked at Pauline, who rose and threw her shawl over her shoulders. Her lips were tightly shut, but she was
