Only seven were hanged

betrayal, her love, her shattered hopes, her disillusionment, her desire for vengeance. She talked a long time, punctuating her story with bursts of pitiful anguish and many tears. Who can ever know the effect of that story on the child? His tears mingled with those of his mother, his heart was consumed with awful urgings. This story of woe was not only a confession of the past, it was a confession of a wrong she had done against the law in the present. She had stolen to live and she was faced with prison again. She had written two letters, which lay, sealed in their envelopes, but unstamped, on a table. One of these letters was addressed to the man who had wronged her, the other was addressed to the police. She asked her child to go out and put the letters in a mail-box. He picked up the letters and left the room. But he deceived his mother in this matter. Like all children, he harbored a loyalty to his mother that nothing could shake. But he also had endured enough to make him secretive. Perhaps this was because he was sensitive. He went to the doorway leading to the street, stayed there a few moments, and returned on tiptoe, hoping that his mother was asleep. He peered through the hinge of the door. He saw his mother pouring a liquid from a bottle into a tumbler which she put on a table near her bed. Then she returned to her bed and lay waiting for him. He stayed a little while before entering. When he slipped into the room she was lying still, exhausted by her efforts. He sat down by her bed, conscious that she was seriously ill, bowed down by grief and despair. His love for his mother bound him to the room. He sat there by the wretched bed all night. Before dawn she awoke from her slumber and drew him to her. She was very pale, but she was still beautiful. She gazed on him for a long time, then stretched out her hand to the tumbler, asking him to drink some of the liquid first and saying that she would drink some after him, for she was sure he was thirsty and she herself felt in need of drink. But there was something strange in her manner, something that frightened the boy. He…