Page 397 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

Rufus Dawes saw him coming, but, secure in the pro-
tection of the girl who owed to him so much, he advanced
a step nearer, and loosing his respectful clasp of her hand,
caught her dress.
‘Oh, help, Maurice, help!’ cried Sylvia again.
Into the face of Rufus Dawes came an expression of hor-
ror-stricken bewilderment. For three days the unhappy
man had contrived to keep life and freedom, in order to
get speech with the one being who, he thought, cherished
for him some affection. Having made an unparalleled es-
cape from the midst of his warders, he had crept to the place
where lived the idol of his dreams, braving recapture, that
he might hear from her two words of justice and gratitude.
Not only did she refuse to listen to him, and shrink from
him as from one accursed, but, at the sound of his name,
she summoned his deadliest foe to capture him. Such mon-
strous ingratitude was almost beyond belief. She, too,—the
child he had nursed and fed, the child for whom he had giv-
en up his hard-earned chance of freedom and fortune, the
child of whom he had dreamed, the child whose image he
had worshipped—she, too, against him! Then there was no
justice, no Heaven, no God! He loosed his hold of her dress,
and, regardless of the approaching footsteps, stood speech-
less, shaking from head to foot. In another instant Frere
and McNab flung themselves upon him, and he was borne
to the ground. Though weakened by starvation, he shook
them off with scarce an effort, and, despite the servants
who came hurrying from the alarmed house, might even
then have turned and made good his escape. But he seemed

For the Term of His Natural Life