"It looks now like Blant is bound for Frankfort; but I'll lay my hat he don't never get there,--not if Trojan can help it." "He'll have to go if he is sent," I replied; "now he has put himself in the hands of the law, he must take his medicine, whatever it is." "Who,--Blant? Him swallow anything he don't want to? I reckon not. There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." _Wednesday, first week in March._ More distressing news from Trigger, when the mail-boy stopped to report to-day. "Same old story all over ag'in," he says, "the babe crying and puning constant, and plumb off its feed, and favoring a little picked bird. Minervy Saxby doubts it's a-holding out till the trial." I heard later he had taken the news on to Blant, through the bars of the jail window. _Saturday Evening._ Philip is in a seventh heaven. Every day in the week now he basks in Dilsey's presence two or three hours, cheerfully doing the menial tasks of keeping up fires and ironing; and on Saturdays he spends almost the entire day in her society, hanging out clothes, turning wringers, doing tremendous deeds on the wood-pile with his ax, running nimbly down and up the rocky sides of the well when the chain breaks and the bucket falls in, as it is fond of doing, and, between labors, giving hazardous performances on the limb of a peach-tree. The teasings of the boys and girls seem powerless to dampen his ardor,--indeed, I suspect that their "Howdy, Mr. Warrick," "Good evening, Mrs. Floyd," fall as music on his ears. _Sunday Night._ When I went with Nucky to the jail this afternoon, I found that the rumors abroad for two weeks had reached it, indeed, they were being freely discussed by the prisoners, the keeper and Blant himself,--I was thankful to see that he was able to put his mind on the subject. "Yes," he said sadly, "it looks like I'll have to give up the hope I have cherished, and try to get my consent to face life again; which God knows I couldn't if it wasn't brung home to me that I got a family depending on me, and a pore little infant looking to me for life itself. Nothing else could ever give me courage to breast the waves of sorrow that swallows me up. But I reckon, after all, I have got a higher call to live than to die; and that, when they acquit me on my trial, constant hard labor for my family will in time take off some of the edge of my sorrow." "But the probabilities is they _won't_ acquit you, Blant," said the keeper impatiently; "I been trying to ding that into your head nigh a week. I told you plain what the talk was about sending you to Frankfort a couple of year'".