This was the thought which eclipsed every other as these strange days rolled on, each of them it seemed an eternity for length, each of them bringing Phil nearer and nearer to the gallows. The very gaolers pitied Philip for his youth and beauty; but they pitied Carrie more that day she obtained entrance to Newgate and a half-hour’s interview with her husband. Phil sat, as he always sat then, his eyes fixed on the floor, his chin resting on his hands. He did not even look up as the door was unlocked, but said merely, ‘Lay it down, gaoler; I have little appetite these days,’ thinking his food had been brought in. Then with a cry, inarticulate, between joy and agony, Carrie ran towards him. Phil did not stir nor speak, and Carrie knelt down beside him, and buried her face against his shoulder, sobbing. He passed his arm round her, but still he did not speak. ‘O Phil! my darling, my joy, why can you not speak to me?’ cried Carrie. She took his hand in hers, and held it to her heart, kissing it and crying over it; but Phil was silent. When he raised his eyes from the ground at last and looked at her, Carrie started, such a grave new look there was in them, and all the shine seemed to have gone from them. ‘What will you do, Carrie?’ he said suddenly. They were the first words he uttered. ‘Do you think your father will forgive you when you are left alone? will take you back to his home and care for you?’ ‘Don’t! don’t!’ cried Carrie; but Phil went on— ‘I shall be hanged on the 12th of next month, Carrie; there’s no chance of a reprieve, they’ve tried for it in vain, the facts are too strong against me. I wish ’twere sooner, even for your sake, my poor darling. You’ll dream of me being hanged each night twice over ere then.’ Carrie put her fingers in her ears. ‘Stop, Phil! for Heaven’s sake do not say these things,’ she cried; ‘they cannot kill you. Have you stopped speaking now? May I take my fingers from my ears?’ ‘Yes,’ laughed Philip. ‘Come, Carrie, tell me, have you no doubt of your husband these days when all the world calls him a murderer?’ ‘Phil!’ ‘Well, what do you make of it all—all this evidence?’ ‘How did it happen?’ asked innocent Carrie. ‘I fear you know as much as I do. Prior did it, I fancy; took off his shoes and followed my father and killed him—that’s all I can think, but there’s not a ghost of fact to go to prove this. They had not even quarrelled, to my knowledge at least.’ ‘O Phil! don’t look like that! Oh, you are not a boy any longer,’ said Carrie, for she had caught the strange new expression of his eyes again as he spoke. ‘I have been a boy too long,’ said Philip; he shook his head and smiled at Carrie as if she were a child; ‘and now I have grown old in a night—like Jack’s bean-stalk. Come and let me speak all my discontent to my love, and years after this she will remember, and will credit me with all I wished to do rather than all I left undone.’ Carrie looked up wonderingly, and Philip spoke on—