Stephen drew back sharply. The innocent baby! who lived out-of-doors! Ben must have forgotten who _he_ was: a thief, belonging to this cell. They were going to let him out; but what difference did that make? His thin face grew wet with perspiration, as he walked away. Why, his very fingers had felt too impure to him, as he tied on her shoes. He went away an hour after, only nodding goodbye to Ben, looking down with an odd grin at the clothes he had asked the jailer to buy for him. Ben had chosen a greenish coat and trousers and yellow waistcoat. He did not shake hands with him. Ben had been mixing hog-food, and the marks were on his fingers. This was yesterday: he was going now to meet his brother, as he requested. Well, what else was there for him to do? He did not look up often, as he plodded over the fields: when he did, it hurt him somehow, this terrible wastefulness, this boundless unused air, and stretch of room. It even pained hiss weakened eyes: so long the oblong slip of clay running from the cell to the wall had been his share, and the yellow patch of sky and brick chimney-top beyond. For so many thousands, too, no more. But they were thieves, foul, like him. Pure men this was for. Stephen looked like an old man now, in spite of Ben's party-colored rigging: stooped and lean, his step slouched: his head almost bald under the old fur cap. Something in the sharpened face, too, looked as if more than eyesight had been palsied in these years of utter solitude: the brain was dulled with sluggishly gnawing over and over the few animal ideas they leave for prisoners' souls,--or, as probably, thoroughly imbruted by them. Soule thought the latter. When the convict had finished his dull walk, he sat down on the wooden staircase that led to his brother's rooms for half an hour, slowly rubbing his legs, conscious of nothing but some flesh-pain, apparently,--and when he did enter the chamber, bowed as indifferently to Soule and his wife as though they had parted carelessly yesterday. His brother glanced at the woman: one look would certainly be enough for her. Poor Stephen's power? If it ever had been, its essence was long since exhaled: there was nothing in his whole nature now but the stalest dregs, surely? Perhaps she thought differently: she looked at the man keenly, and then gave a quick, warning glance to her husband, as she sat down to her sewing. Soule did not heed it as he usually did: he was choked and sick to see what a wreck his brother really was. God help us! to think of the time when Stephen and he were boys together, and this was the end of it! "Come to the fire, old fellow!" he said, huskily. "You're blue with cold. We used to have snows like this at home, eh?"