The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

claimant, and she was able to procure a good many luxuries to mitigate

the severity of her prison life. It enabled her also to have her own

family near her, and to see some of them daily. The tender solicitude of

her mother, her childlike grief, and her firm belief in the real

guiltlessness of her daughter, touched even the custodians of the Tombs

who are enured to scenes of pathos.

Mrs. Hawkins had hastened to her daughter as soon as she received money

for the journey. She had no reproaches, she had only tenderness and

pity. She could not shut out the dreadful facts of the case, but it had

been enough for her that Laura had said, in their first interview,

“mother, I did not know what I was doing.” She obtained lodgings near,

the prison and devoted her life to her daughter, as if she had been

really her own child. She would have remained in the prison day and

night if it had been permitted. She was aged and feeble, but this great

necessity seemed to give her new life.

The pathetic story of the old lady’s ministrations, and her simplicity

and faith, also got into the newspapers in time, and probably added to

the pathos of this wrecked woman’s fate, which was beginning to be felt

by the public. It was certain that she had champions who thought that

her wrongs ought to be placed against her crime, and expressions of this

feeling came to her in various ways. Visitors came to see her, and gifts

of fruit and flowers were sent, which brought some cheer into her hard

and gloomy cell.

Laura had declined to see either Philip or Harry, somewhat to the

former’s relief, who had a notion that she would necessarily feel

humiliated by seeing him after breaking faith with him, but to the

discomfiture of Harry, who still felt her fascination, and thought her

refusal heartless. He told Philip that of course he had got through with

such a woman, but he wanted to see her.

Philip, to keep him from some new foolishness, persuaded him to go with

him to Philadelphia; and, give his valuable services in the mining

operations at Ilium.

The law took its course with Laura. She was indicted for murder in the

first degree and held for trial at the summer term. The two most

distinguished criminal lawyers in the city had been retained for her

defence, and to that the resolute woman devoted her days with a courage

that rose as she consulted with her counsel and understood the methods of

criminal procedure in New York.

She was greatly depressed, however, by the news from Washington.

Congress adjourned and her bill had failed to pass the Senate. It must

wait for the next session.

CHAPTER XLVIII

It had been a bad winter, somehow, for the firm of Pennybacker, Bigler

and Small. These celebrated contractors usually made more money during

the session of the legislature at Harrisburg than upon all their summer

work, and this winter had been unfruitful. It was unaccountable to

Bigler.

“You see, Mr. Bolton,” he said, and Philip was present at the

conversation, “it puts us all out. It looks as if politics was played

out. We’d counted on the year of Simon’s re-election. And, now, he’s

reelected, and I’ve yet to see the first man who’s the better for it.”

“You don’t mean to say,” asked Philip, “that he went in without paying

anything?”

“Not a cent, not a dash cent, as I can hear,” repeated Mr. Bigler,

indignantly. “I call it a swindle on the state. How it was done gets

me. I never saw such a tight time for money in Harrisburg.”

“Were there no combinations, no railroad jobs, no mining schemes put

through in connection with the election?

“Not that I knew,” said Bigler, shaking his head in disgust. “In fact it

was openly said, that there was no money in the election. It’s perfectly

unheard of.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Philip, “it was effected on what the insurance

companies call the ‘endowment,’ or the ‘paid up’ plan, by which a policy

is secured after a certain time without further payment.”

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