"Oh, Helen! poor Helen! How can I tell her, when she loved him so much!" Bell sobbed, while Bob repeated many things to prove how strong was the love the unfortunate Mark Ray had borne for his young wife.
"He used to make pictures of her," he said, "with a pencil which he had, and once he whittled out her face with a lily in the hair. It was a good likeness, too, and I saw Mark kiss it more than once when he thought he was not seen. He had her photograph, it seems, but a brutal keeper took it away, for no earthly purpose except to distress him. I never saw Mark cast down till then, when for two whole days he scarcely spoke, but would stand for hours with his face turned toward the North, and a quivering motion around his lips, as if his heart were broken."
Bell could hear no more, but motioned him to stop.
"It's too terrible even to think about," she said. "Oh, how can I tell Helen!"
"You will do it better than any one else," Bob said. "You will be very tender with her; and, Bell, tell her, as some consolation, that he did not break with the treatment, as most of us wretches did; he kept up wonderfully--said he was perfectly well--and, indeed, he looked so. Tom Tubbs, who was his shadow, clinging to him with wonderful fidelity, will corroborate what I have said. He was with us, he saw him, and only animal force prevented him from leaping from the car and going to him where he fell. I shall never forget his shriek of agony at the sight of that blood-stained face turned an instant toward us."
"Don't, don't!" Bell cried again; "I can't endure it!" and as Mrs. Reynolds then came in, she left her lover, and with a foreboding heart, started for Mrs. Banker's, meeting on the steps Tom Tubbs himself, who had come on an errand similar to her own.
"Sit here in the hall a moment," she said to him, as the servant admitted them both. "I must see Mrs. Ray first."
Helen was reading to her mother-in-law, but she laid down her book and came to welcome Bell, detecting at once the agitation in her manner and asking if she had had bad news from Robert.
"No, Robert is at home; I have just come from there, and he told me--oh! Helen, can you bear it?--Mark is dead--shot twice as he jumped from the train taking him to another prison, Robert saw it, and knew that he was dead."