ll the

family!”

Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket,

but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at

work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will,

she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money,

which he readily received.

He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had

quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in

lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to

find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw

stopped in its work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generally

say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.

In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter

winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of

autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed

two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it,

she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned

from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be

twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight

together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the

chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out