Hale's last letter to his sweetheart before his very face and"
"Silence, wenches!" thundered the guard at this point and the two girls at once relapsed into obedient speechlessness.
The Bridewell, to which they were being conducted, which also faced the "Fields" a short distance away, had been built only the previous year, in 1775, the Debtors' Prison having proved too small to accommodate all classes of prisoners. It was, as a matter of fact, still uncompleted in many respects, as to windows, through which the winter's cold swept in upon the unfortunate war-prisoners and as to numerous other comforts, besides.
It was a small gray stone building, two stories high, with a basement. On its first floor to the right of the entrance was the "Long Room," occupied by women, the white prisoners in front, the colored ones at the rear of the apartment, a partition between.
It was into this room that Mehitable and Charity were pushed by the brutal-looking keeper to whom they had been turned over by their guard.
As they instinctively paused upon the threshold, such a burst of noise greeted them that they faltered back. A shriek of crazy laughter, someone weeping, groans and cries of every description all mingled into a bedlam of noise. It seemed not to affect the prison keeper in the least. He merely grinned as he relocked the grated door.
For a little while the two girls were too frightened to move. They cowered back sharp eyes inspected
