"Certainly," he said; "of course it's again' the rules; but what's rules when a pore little innocent babe is pining to death?" But when we spoke to Blant, our hopes were dashed to the ground. He said sternly, "No, it can't be,--Nucky never ought to have brung her,--she must be took back immediate. In a little while more she'd have forgot me,--little young things like that can't have no very long recollections. Now, God help her, she'll have to start all over again. But it has to be,--it would be pure cruelty to keep her here and get her all wropped up in me again, only to face a' eternal parting." The keeper pondered silently for quite a while; then he spoke up, firmly. "Blant," he said, "I got a confession to make to you, and pardon to ax of you, for what I have done. In the pity and tenderness of my heart, I have lied to you, and led you on to hope for a death sentence, when God knows there haint the ghost of a show you'll git one. In the first place, if you'll ricollect, there's a powerful prejudyce again' hanging in this country; in the next, I am sorry to tell you you haint done nothing to really earn the gallows. Everybody knows how it was betwixt you and Rich; and as for Todd and Elhannon and Ben and Jeems that you kilt, and t'other Cheevers you wounded, why, that war is a family affair, in which the law haint got no particular call, or no great desire, to meddle, and wouldn't if you hadn't a-throwed yourself spang in its arms thisaway. As it is, you have put it in a mighty embarrassing position, and, as you might say, forced it to set up and take notice, and probably some kind of action,--it may be a couple of year' sentence to Frankfort, or some such, but certainly there haint a-going to be no hanging business. I hate to disapp'int your hopes of dying,--I know you don't take no easement or comfort in nothing else. But truth is truth. Now my advice to you is, be sensible, brace up, take some comfort, keep the babe here with you and git yourself sort of tied on to life again." Blant's answer was angry and indignant. "May the earth open and swallow me before I take cheer or comfort in this world from which I have sent the friend of my bosom, my more than brother! Till I have to, I haint going to give up the hope of laying down my life for his. If you lied to me once, you may be lying to me again. Take her, Nucky!" He attempted to hand over the babe to Nucky; but it was not so easily accomplished. The process of separating her from him was such a painful one that he himself was almost unmanned, and again there was not a dry eye in the jail. XXV CHANGE AND GROWTH _Monday Night. Mid-February._ It is six weeks since the roads became impassable for wagons, and already we begin to feel some of the effects of the isolation. Flour, sugar and coffee have to be very sparingly used. Of course there is plenty of corn-meal, beans, middling and sorghum, so there is no danger of starvation.