The time which hung so heavily upon her hands was flying rapidly, and at last only a week intervened ere the eventful day. Hugh had gone down to Frankfort on an errand to the dressmaker’s for ’Lina, and finding that he must wait some time, it occurred to him to visit the Penitentiary, where he had not been for a long time. The keeper, a personal friend of Hugh’s, expressed much pleasure at meeting him, and after a moment, said laughingly, “We have no _lions_ to show just now, unless it be Sullivan, the negro stealer. You have never seen him, I think, since he was sent to us. You know whom I mean, the man who ran off Uncle Sam.” Yes, Hugh knew, but he was not especially interested in him. Still he followed the keeper, who said that Sullivan’s time expired in a few days. “We’ll find him on the rope-walk,” he continued. “We put our hardest customers there. Not that he gives us trouble, for he does not, and I rather like the chap, but we have a spite against these Yankee negro-stealers,” and he led the way to the long low room, where groups of men walked up and down—up and down—holding the long line of hemp, which, as far as they were concerned, would never come to an end until the day of their release. “That’s he,” the keeper whispered to Hugh, “the one with that mark upon his forehead,” and he pointed to one of the convicts advancing slowly towards them. With a start and a shudder Hugh grew cold and sick, for it needed but a glance to assure him that he stood in the presence of Adah’s guardian, whose sudden disappearance had been so mysterious. Hugh never knew how he kept himself from leaping into that walk and compelling him to tell if he knew anything of Willie Hastings’ father. He did, indeed, take one forward step, but the next moment he controlled himself as he remembered where he was, and knew it was no place for a scene. “But I must see him,” he thought, “I must talk with him and compel him to tell me what he knows of Adah Hastings.” Hastily quitting the spot, he explained to the keeper that there was a particular reason for his talking with Sullivan, and asked permission to do so. At first the keeper hesitated, but finally consented, and an hour later, when the convicts left their work, Hugh Worthington was confronting the famous negro-stealer, who gave him back glance for glance, and stood unflinchingly before him as if there were upon his conscience no Adah Hastings, who, by his connivance, had been so terribly wronged. At the mention of _her_ name, however, his bold assurance left him. There was a quivering of the muscles about his mouth, a humid moisture upon his eyelids, and his whole manner was indicative of strong emotion as he asked if Hugh knew aught of her, and then listened while Hugh told what he knew, and where she had gone.