When he had left poor Jennie Thorn, his betrayed and ruined victim, fainting upon the floor, with his demoniacal words ringing in her ears, he had little dreamed how and when he should meet her again. Perhaps he thought she would pass silently from his life as other wronged ones had done, and never be seen or heard of again. Not the slightest premonition of evil had come to tell him that the hatred he had stirred to life in her once loving heart would pursue him to the scaffold. Yet so it was, and Jennie Thorn had stood up in the witness-box and given, under oath, the testimony that had cost him his life--had given it gladly, triumphantly, without one thrill of pity or regard for the man she had once loved and trusted. Well, it was all over now--the trial was a thing of the past--to-morrow the sentence of the law would be carried out and his neck would be broken upon the scaffold. Many a time when he thought of it now with a sick and shuddering horror, he recalled the angry words that Queenie Lyle had spoken to him years ago: "_They cannot be drowned who are born to be hung._" His reckless, wicked career was over. He had cheated men of their substance at the gaming-table, he had robbed women of what was dearer, their peace and honor, without a thought of the retribution that would fall on him from the God he had offended. But now when the priest came to him and told him solemnly and sadly what terrors awaited him if he died unrepentant, remorse and terror struck their terrible fangs into his guilty heart. "I have done many wrongs that nothing can ever set right, father," he said humbly to the meek priest. "But there is one black falsehood hanging heavy on my heart, one sin I may in some little way atone for. Will you send Lawrence Ernscliffe to see me to-night? I will tell him how cruelly I wronged the lovely woman he married and how pure and innocent she was then and ever. And Jennie Thorn, father. Will you ask her to come and see me? I will beg her to forgive me." "I will send Captain Ernscliffe to you, my son, if he will come, but Jennie Thorn--that is impossible!" "Is she so bitter and unrelenting, then!" said the prisoner, sadly. "Let us hope not," said the gentle priest. "But she is gone away, my son. "Immediately after your trial and conviction she left the United States and returned to England as the wife of the detective who effected your arrest." The prisoner sighed and bent his head. The priest bowed over him a moment, murmured a benediction and passed out through the heavy iron door that shut Leon Vinton in forever from the busy, beautiful world. CHAPTER XLII. A few hours later the heavy iron door was unlocked, then clanged together again, shutting Lawrence Ernscliffe in alone with the condemned prisoner. They looked at each other in blank silence for a minute, then the visitor said coldly: "You sent for me?"