She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget--the story paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, while the dinner was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was singing hymns in the Primitive chapel and her father was poring over the "Mistakes of Moses." But would he do it? She had deceived him twice. And then his sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her. All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over the sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out of Court: "Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than your Judge!" Yes, he loved her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of a prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her. She would write a letter to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, but plainly pointing to it. Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to her end. She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse language of the farmyard. "The suspense was the worst. I shall be glad when it's all over," said Bessie. The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was thinking so hard of her, and if her hand did not shake so much she would write to ask for his forgiveness. "I'll write for you," said Fenella. "And will you give the letter into his own hands, miss, so that his sisters may not see it?" "I'll try, dear." Sitting by the door of the cell, under the light from the grill, Fenella wrote with the prison paper on her lap, while Bessie, without a vestige of colour in her forlorn face, dictated from the bed: "DEAR ALICK,--You will have heard what they are going to do to me. It is dreadful, isn't it? I thought perhaps you would have written me a few lines, though I know it is too much to expect after all the sorrow and shame I have brought on you. "Oh, if I could only have lived to make it up to you! We could have gone away, as you always said, to America or somewhere. I should have been so good, and we should have been so happy and nobody to cast all this up to us. "What I did was very wrong, but I don't see what good it will do to the King to take my life, and me a poor girl he never saw in the world. I still think if there were anybody to speak for me he would forgive me even yet and everything would be all right. But that's more than anybody would do for me now, I suppose--even you, though I have always loved you so dear." Bessie paused. "Is that all?" asked Fenella, in a husky whisper. "Not quite," said Bessie, and she began again. "Mother was here last week and brought me your photo. It got wet in my bag on the way from Derby Haven, and it is cracked and smudged. But I kiss it constant and it is such company.