*
*Vide Manchester Guardian of Wednesday, March 18,1846; and
also the Reports of Captain Williams, prison inspector.
Esther's term of imprisonment was ended. She received a good
character in the governor's books; she had picked her daily quantity
of oakum, had never deserved the extra punishment of the treadmill,
and had been civil and decorous in her language. And once more she
was out of prison. The door closed behind her with a ponderous
clang, and in her desolation she felt as if shut out of home--from
the only shelter she could meet with, houseless and penniless as she
was, on that dreary day.
But it was but for an instant that she stood there doubting. One
thought had haunted her both by night and by day, with monomaniacal
incessancy; and that thought was how to save Mary (her dead sister's
only child, her own little pet in the days of her innocence) from
following in the same downward path to vice. To whom could she
speak and ask for aid? She shrank from the idea of addressing John
Barton again; her heart sank within her, at the remembrance of his
fierce repulsing action, and far fiercer words.
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