It was about ten o’clock on
the night before Christmas, and very cold. Christmas
Eve is a very-much-occupied evening everywhere, in
a newspaper office especially so, and all of the twenty
and odd reporters were out that night on assignments,
and Conway and Bronson were the only two remaining
in the local room. They were the very best of
friends, in the office and out of it; but as the city
editor had given Conway the Christmas-eve story to
write instead of Bronson, the latter was jealous,
and their relations were strained. I use the word
“story” in the newspaper sense, where everything
written for the paper is a story, whether it is an
obituary, or a reading notice, or a dramatic criticism,
or a descriptive account of the crowded streets and
the lighted shop-windows of a Christmas Eve. Conway
had finished his story quite half an hour before,
and should have sent it out to be mutilated by the
blue pencil of a copy editor; but as the city editor
had twice appeared at the door of the local room, as
though looking for some one to send out on another
assignment, both Conway and Bronson kept on steadily
writing against time, to keep him off until some one
else came in. Conway had written his concluding
paragraph a dozen times, and Bronson had conscientiously
polished and repolished a three-line “personal”
he was writing, concerning a gentleman unknown to
fame, and who would remain unknown to fame until that
paragraph appeared in print.
The city editor blocked the door for
the third time, and looked at Bronson with a faint
smile of sceptical appreciation.
“Is that very important?” he asked.
Bronson said, “Not very,”
doubtfully, as though he did not think his opinion
should be trusted on such a matter, and eyed the paragraph
with critical interest. Conway rushed his pencil
over his paper, with the tip of his tongue showing
between his teeth, and became suddenly absorbed.
“Well, then, if you are not
very busy,” said the city editor, “I
wish you would go down to Moyamensing. They release
that bank-robber Quinn to-night, and it ought to make
a good story. He was sentenced for six years,
I think, but he has been commuted for good conduct
and bad health. There was a preliminary story
about it in the paper this morning, and you can get
all the facts from that. It’s Christmas
Eve, and all that sort of thing, and you ought to
be able to make something of it.”
There are certain stories written
for a Philadelphia newspaper that circle into print
with the regularity of the seasons. There is the
“First Sunday in the Park,” for example,
which comes on the first warm Sunday in the spring,
and which is made up of a talk with a park policeman
who guesses at the number of people who have passed
through the gates that day, and announcements of the
re-painting of the boat-houses and the near approach
of the open-air concerts. You end this story
with an allusion to the presence in the park of the
“wan-faced children of the tenement,” and
the worthy workingmen (if it is a one-cent paper which
the workingmen are likely to read), and tell how they
worshipped nature in the open air, instead of saying
that in place of going properly to church, they sat
around in their shirt-sleeves and scattered egg-shells
and empty beer bottles and greasy Sunday newspapers
over the green grass for which the worthy men who
do not work pay taxes. Then there is the “Hottest
Sunday in the Park,” which comes up a month
later, when you increase the park policeman’s
former guess by fifteen thousand, and give it a news
value by adding a list of the small boys drowned in
bathing.
The “First Haul of Shad”
in the Delaware is another reliable story, as is also
the first ice fit for skating in the park; and then
there is always the Thanksgiving story, when you ask
the theatrical managers what they have to be thankful
for, and have them tell you, “For the best season
that this theatre has ever known, sir,” and offer
you a pass for two; and there is the New Year’s
story when you interview the local celebrities as
to what they most want for the new year, and turn
their commonplace replies into something clever.
There is also a story on Christmas Day, and the one
Conway had just written on the street scenes of Christmas
Eve. After you have written one of these stories
two or three times, you find it just as easy to write
it in the office as anywhere else. One gentleman
of my acquaintance did this most unsuccessfully.
He wrote his Christmas-day story with the aid of a
directory and the file of a last year’s paper.
From the year-old file he obtained the names of all
the charitable institutions which made a practice
of giving their charges presents and Christmas trees,
and from the directory he drew the names of their presidents
and boards of directors; but as he was unfortunately
lacking in religious knowledge and a sense of humor,
he included all the Jewish institutions on the list,
and they wrote to the paper and rather objected to
being represented as decorating Christmas trees, or
in any way celebrating that particular day. But
of all stale, flat, and unprofitable stories, this
releasing of prisoners from Moyamensing was the worst.
It seemed to Bronson that they were always releasing
prisoners; he wondered how they possibly left themselves
enough to make a county prison worth while. And
the city editor for some reason always chose him to
go down and see them come out. As they were released
at midnight, and never did anything of moment when
they were released but to immediately cross over to
the nearest saloon with all their disreputable friends
who had gathered to meet them, it was trying to one
whose regard for the truth was at first unshaken, and
whose imagination at the last became exhausted.
So, when Bronson heard he had to release another prisoner
in pathetic descriptive prose, he lost heart and patience,
and rebelled.
“Andy,” he said, sadly
and impressively, “if I have written that story
once, I have written it twenty times. I have described
Moyamensing with the moonlight falling on its walls;
I have described it with the walls shining in the
rain; I have described it covered with the pure white
snow that falls on the just as well as on the criminal;
and I have made the bloodhounds in the jail-yard howl
dismally and there are no bloodhounds,
as you very well know; and I have made released convicts
declare their intention to lead a better and a purer
life, when they only said, ’If youse put anything
in the paper about me, I’ll lay for you;’
and I have made them fall on the necks of their weeping
wives, when they only asked, ’Did you bring me
some tobacco? I’m sick for a pipe;’
and I will not write any more about it; and if I do,
I will do it here in the office, and that is all there
is to it.”
“Oh yes, I think you will,”
said the city editor, easily.
“Let some one else do it,”
Bronson pleaded “some one who hasn’t
done the thing to death, who will get a new point
of view ” Conway, who had stopped
writing, and had been grinning at Bronson over the
city editor’s back, grew suddenly grave and
absorbed, and began to write again with feverish industry.
“Conway, now, he’s great at that sort of
thing. He’s ”
The city editor laid a clipping from
the morning paper on the desk, and took a roll of
bills from his pocket.
“There’s the preliminary
story,” he said. “Conway wrote it,
and it moved several good people to stop at the business
office on their way down-town and leave something
for the released convict’s Christmas dinner.
The story is a very good story, and impressed them,”
he went on, counting out the bills as he spoke, “to
the extent of fifty five dollars. You take that
and give it to him, and tell him to forget the past,
and keep to the narrow road, and leave jointed jimmies
alone. That money will give you an excuse for
talking to him, and he may say something grateful
to the paper, and comment on its enterprise. Come,
now, get up. I’ve spoiled you two boys.
You’ve been sulking all the evening because
Conway got that story, and now you are sulking because
you have got a better one. Think of it getting
out of prison after four years, and on Christmas Eve!
It’s a beautiful story just as it is. But,”
he added, grimly, “you’ll try to improve
on it, and grow maudlin. I believe sometimes
you’d turn a red light on the dying gladiator.”
The conscientiously industrious Conway,
now that his fear of being sent out again was at rest,
laughed at this with conciliatory mirth, and Bronson
smiled sheepishly, and peace was restored between them.
But as Bronson capitulated, he tried
to make conditions. “Can I take a cab?”
he asked.
The city editor looked at his watch.
“Yes,” he said; “you’d better;
it’s late, and we go to press early to-night,
remember.”
“And can I send my stuff down
by the driver and go home?” Bronson went on.
“I can write it up there, and leave the cab at
Fifteenth Street, near our house. I don’t
want to come all the way down-town again.”
“No,” said the chief;
“the driver might lose it, or get drunk, or
something.”
“Then can I take Gallegher with
me to bring it back?” asked Bronson. Gallegher
was one of the office-boys.
The city editor stared at him grimly.
“Wouldn’t you like a type-writer, and
Conway to write the story for you, and a hot supper
sent after you?” he asked.
“No; Gallegher will do,” Bronson said.
Gallegher had his overcoat on and
a night-hawk at the door when Bronson came down the
stairs and stopped to light a cigar in the hallway.
“Go to Moyamensing,” said Gallegher to
the driver.
Gallegher looked at the man to see
if he would show himself sufficiently human to express
surprise at their visiting such a place on such a
night, but the man only gathered up his reins impassively,
and Gallegher stepped into the cab, with a feeling
of disappointment at having missed a point. He
rubbed the frosted panes and looked out with boyish
interest at the passing holiday-makers. The pavements
were full of them and their bundles, and the street
as well, with wavering lines of medical students and
clerks blowing joyfully on the horns, and pushing
through the crowd with one hand on the shoulder of
the man in front. The Christmas greens hung in
long lines, and only stopped where a street crossed,
and the shop fronts were so brilliant that the street
was as light as day.
It was so light that Bronson could
read the clipping the city editor had given him.
“What is it we are going on?” asked Gallegher.
Gallegher enjoyed many privileges;
they were given him principally, I think, because
if they had not been given him he would have taken
them. He was very young and small, but sturdily
built, and he had a general knowledge which was entertaining,
except when he happened to know more about anything
than you did. It was impossible to force him
to respect your years, for he knew all about you, from
the number of lines that had been cut off your last
story to the amount of your very small salary; and
there was an awful simplicity about him, and a certain
sympathy, or it may have been merely curiosity, which
showed itself towards every one with whom he came
in contact. So when he asked Bronson what he
was going to do, Bronson read the clipping in his
hand aloud.
“‘Henry Quinn,’”
Bronson read, “’who was sentenced to six
years in Moyamensing Prison for the robbery of the
Second National Bank at Tacony, will be liberated
to-night. His sentence has been commuted, owing
to good conduct and to the fact that for the last year
he has been in very ill health. Quinn was night
watchman at the Tacony bank at the time of the robbery,
and, as was shown at the trial, was in reality merely
the tool of the robbers. He confessed to complicity
in the robbery, but disclaimed having any knowledge
of the later whereabouts of the money, which has never
been recovered. This was his first offence, and
he had, up to the time of the robbery, borne a very
excellent reputation. Although but lately married,
his married life had been a most unhappy one, his
friends claiming that his wife and her mother were
the most to blame. Quinn took to spending his
evenings away from home, and saw a great deal of a
young woman who was supposed to have been the direct
cause of his dishonesty. He admitted, in fact,
that it was to get money to enable him to leave the
country with her that he agreed to assist the bank-robbers.
The paper acknowledges the receipt of ten dollars
from M.J.C. to be given to Quinn on his release, also
two dollars from Cash and three from Mary.”
Gallegher’s comment on this
was one of disdain. “There isn’t much
in that,” he said, “is there? Just
a man that’s done time once, and they’re
letting him out. Now, if it was Kid McCoy, or
Billy Porter, or some one like that eh?”
Gallegher had as high a regard for a string of aliases
after a name as others have for a double line of K.C.B.’s
and C.S.L.’s, and a man who had offended but
once was not worthy of his consideration. “And
you will work in those bloodhounds again, too, I suppose,”
he said, gloomily.
The reporter pretended not to hear
this, and to doze in the corner, and Gallegher whistled
softly to himself and twisted luxuriously on the cushions.
It was a half-hour later when Bronson awoke to find
he had dozed in all seriousness, as a sudden current
of cold air cut in his face, and he saw Gallegher
standing with his hand on the open door, with the
gray wall of the prison rising behind him.
Moyamensing looks like a prison.
It is solidly, awfully suggestive of the sternness
of its duty and of the hopelessness of its failing
in it. It stands like a great fortress of the
Middle Ages in a quadrangle of cheap brick and white
dwelling-houses, and a few mean shops and tawdry saloons.
It has the towers of a fortress, the pillars of an
Egyptian temple; but more impressive than either of
these is the awful simplicity of the bare, uncompromising
wall that shuts out the prying eyes of the world and
encloses those who are no longer of the world.
It is hard to imagine what effect it has on those who
remain in the houses about it. One would think
they would sooner live overlooking a graveyard than
such a place, with its mystery and hopelessness and
unending silence, its hundreds of human inmates whom
no one can see or hear, but who, one feels, are there.
Bronson, as he looked up at the prison,
familiar as it was to him, admitted that he felt all
this, by a frown and a slight shrug of the shoulders.
“You are to wait here until twelve,” he
said to the driver of the nighthawk. “Don’t
go far away.”
Bronson and the boy walked to an oyster-saloon
that made one of the line of houses facing the gates
of the prison on the opposite side of the street,
and seated themselves at one of the tables from which
Bronson could see out towards the northern entrance
of the jail. He told Gallegher to eat something,
so that the saloon-keeper would make them welcome
and allow them to remain, and Gallegher climbed up
on a high chair, and heard the man shout back his
order to the kitchen with a faint smile of anticipation.
It was eleven o’clock, but it was even then
necessary to begin to watch, as there was a tradition
in the office that prisoners with influence were sometimes
released before their sentence was quite fulfilled,
and Bronson eyed the “released prisoners’
gate” from across the top of his paper.
The electric lights before the prison showed every
stone in its wall, and turned the icy pavements into
black mirrors of light. On a church steeple a
block away a round clock-face told the minutes, and
Bronson wondered, if they dragged so slowly to him,
how tardily they must follow one another to the men
in the prison, who could not see the clock’s
face. The office-boy finished his supper, and
went out to explore the neighborhood, and came back
later to say that it was growing colder, and that
he had found the driver in a saloon, but that he was,
to all appearances, still sober. Bronson suggested
that he had better sacrifice himself once again and
eat something for the good of the house, and Gallegher
assented listlessly, with the comment that one “might
as well be eatin’ as doin’ nothin’.”
He went out again restlessly, and was gone for a quarter
of an hour, and Bronson had re-read the day’s
paper and the signs on the wall and the clipping he
had read before, and was thinking of going out to find
him, when Gallegher put his head and arm through the
door and beckoned to him from the outside. Bronson
wrapped his coat up around his throat and followed
him leisurely to the street. Gallegher halted
at the curb, and pointed across to the figure of a
woman pacing up and down in the glare of the electric
lights, and making a conspicuous shadow on the white
surface of the snow.
“That lady,” said Gallegher,
“asked me what door they let the released prisoners
out of, an’ I said I didn’t know, but that
I knew a young fellow who did.”
Bronson stood considering the possible
value of this for a moment, and then crossed the street
slowly. The woman looked up sharply as he approached,
but stood still.
“If you are waiting to see Quinn,”
Bronson said, abruptly, “he will come out of
that upper gate, the green one with the iron spikes
over it.”
The woman stood motionless, and looked
at him doubtfully. She was quite young and pretty,
but her face was drawn and wearied-looking, as though
she were a convalescent or one who was in trouble.
She was of the working class.
“I am waiting for him myself,”
Bronson said, to reassure her.
“Are you?” the girl answered,
vaguely. “Did you try to see him?”
She did not wait for an answer, but went on, nervously:
“They wouldn’t let me see him. I
have been here since noon. I thought maybe he
might get out before that, and I’d be too late.
You are sure that is the gate, are you? Some
of them told me there was another, and I was afraid
I’d miss him. I’ve waited so long,”
she added. Then she asked, “You’re
a friend of his, ain’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Bronson
said. “I am waiting to give him some money.”
“Yes? I have some money,
too,” the girl said, slowly. “Not
much.” Then she looked at Bronson eagerly
and with a touch of suspicion, and took a step backward.
“You’re no friend of hern, are you?”
she asked, sharply.
“Her? Whom do you mean?” asked Bronson.
But Gallegher interrupted him.
“Certainly not,” he said. “Of
course not.”
The girl gave a satisfied nod, and
then turned to retrace her steps over the beat she
had laid out for herself.
“Whom do you think she means?”
asked Bronson, in a whisper.
“His wife, I suppose,” Gallegher answered,
impatiently.
The girl came back, as if finding
some comfort in their presence. “She’s
inside now,” with a nod of her head towards the
prison. “Her and her mother. They
come in a cab,” she added, as if that circumstance
made it a little harder to bear. “And when
I asked if I could see him, the man at the gate said
he had orders not. I suppose she gave him them
orders. Don’t you think so?” She did
not wait for a reply, but went on as though she had
been watching alone so long that it was a relief to
speak to some one. “How much money have
you got?” she asked.
Bronson told her.
“Fifty-five dollars!”
The girl laughed, sadly. “I only got fifteen
dollars. That ain’t much, is it? That’s
all I could make I’ve been sick that
and the fifteen I sent the paper.”
“Was it you that did
you send any money to a paper?” asked Bronson.
“Yes; I sent fifteen dollars.
I thought maybe I wouldn’t get to speak to him
if she came out with him, and I wanted him to have
the money, so I sent it to the paper, and asked them
to see he got it. I give it under three names:
I give my initials, and ‘Cash,’ and just
my name ‘Mary.’ I wanted
him to know it was me give it. I suppose they’ll
send it all right. Fifteen dollars don’t
look like much against fifty-five dollars, does it?”
She took a small roll of bills from her pocket and
smiled down at them. Her hands were bare, and
Bronson saw that they were chapped and rough.
She rubbed them one over the other, and smiled at
him wearily.
Bronson could not place her in the
story he was about to write; it was a new and unlooked-for
element, and one that promised to be of moment.
He took the roll of bills from his pocket and handed
them to her. “You might as well give him
this too,” he said. “I will be here
until he comes out, and it makes no difference who
gives him the money, so long as he gets it.”
The girl smiled confusedly. The
show of confidence seemed to please her. But
she said, “No, I’d rather not. You
see, it isn’t mine, and I did work for
this,” holding out her own roll of money.
She looked up at him steadily, and paused for a moment,
and then said, almost defiantly, “Do you know
who I am?”
“I can guess,” Bronson said.
“Yes, I suppose you can,”
the girl answered. “Well, you can believe
it or not, just as you please” as
though he had accused her of something “but,
before God, it wasn’t my doings.”
She pointed with a wave of her hand towards the prison
wall. “I did not know it was for me
he helped them get the money until he said so on the
stand. I didn’t know he was thinking of
running off with me at all. I guess I’d
have gone if he had asked me. But I didn’t
put him up to it as they said I’d done.
I knew he cared for me a lot, but I didn’t think
he cared as much as that. His wife” she
stopped, and seemed to consider her words carefully,
as if to be quite fair in what she said “his
wife, I guess, didn’t know just how to treat
him. She was too fond of going out, and having
company at the house, when he was away nights watching
at the bank. When they was first married she used
to go down to the bank and sit up with him to keep
him company; but it was lonesome there in the dark,
and she give it up. She was always fond of company
and having men around. Her and her mother are
a good deal alike. Henry used to grumble about
it, and then she’d get mad, and that’s
how it begun. And then the neighbors talked too.
It was after that that he got to coming to see me.
I was living out in service then, and he used to stop
in to see me on his way back from the bank, about
seven in the morning, when I was up in the kitchen
getting breakfast. I’d give him a cup of
coffee or something, and that’s how we got acquainted.”
She turned her face away, and looked
at the lights farther down the street. “They
said a good deal about me and him that wasn’t
true.” There was a pause, and then she
looked at Bronson again. “I told him he
ought to stop coming to see me, and to make it up with
his wife, but he said he liked me best. I couldn’t
help his saying that, could I, if he did? Then
he then this come,” she nodded to
the jail, “and they blamed me for it.
They said that I stood in with the bank-robbers, and
was working with them; they said they used me for to
get him to help them.” She lifted her face
to the boy and the man, and they saw that her eyes
were wet and that her face was quivering. “That’s
likely, isn’t it?” she demanded, with a
sob. She stood for a moment looking at the great
iron gate, and then at the clock-face glowing dully
through the falling snow: it showed a quarter
to twelve. “When he was put away,”
she went on, sadly, “I started in to wait for
him, and to save something against his coming out.
I only got three dollars a week and my keep, but I
had saved one hundred and thirty dollars up to last
April, and then I took sick, and it all went to the
doctor and for medicines. I didn’t want
to spend it that way, but I couldn’t die and
not see him. Sometimes I thought it would be better
if I did die and save the money for him, and then there
wouldn’t be any more trouble, anyway. But
I couldn’t make up my mind to do it. I
did go without taking medicines they laid out for me
for three days; but I had to live I just
had to. Sometimes I think I ought to have
given up, and not tried to get well. What do you
think?”
Bronson shook his head, and cleared
his throat as if he were going to speak, but said
nothing. Gallegher was looking up at the girl
with large, open eyes. Bronson wondered if any
woman would ever love him as much as that, or if he
would ever love any woman so. It made him feel
lonesome, and he shook his head. “Well?”
he said, impatiently.
“Well, that’s all; that’s
how it is,” she said. “She’s
been living on there at Tacony with her mother.
She kept seeing as many men as before, and kept getting
pitied all the time; everybody was so sorry for her.
When he was took so bad that time a year ago with his
lungs, they said in Tacony that if he died she’d
marry Charley Oakes, the conductor. He’s
always going to see her. Them that knew her knew
me, and I got word about how Henry was getting on.
I couldn’t see him, because she told lies about
me to the warden, and they wouldn’t let me.
But I got word about him. He’s been fearful
sick just lately. He caught a cold walking in
the yard, and it got down to his lungs. That’s
why they are letting him out. They say he’s
changed so. I wonder if I’m changed much?”
she said. “I’ve fallen off since I
was ill.” She passed her hands slowly over
her face, with a touch of vanity that hurt Bronson
somehow, and he wished he might tell her how pretty
she still was. “Do you think he’ll
know me?” she asked. “Do you think
she’ll let me speak to him?”
“I don’t know. How
can I tell?” said the reporter, sharply.
He was strangely nervous and upset. He could
see no way out of it. The girl seemed to be telling
the truth, and yet the man’s wife was with him
and by his side, as she should be, and this woman had
no place on the scene, and could mean nothing but
trouble to herself and to every one else. “Come,”
he said, abruptly, “we had better be getting
up there. It’s only five minutes of twelve.”
The girl turned with a quick start,
and walked on ahead of them up the drive leading between
the snow-covered grass-plots that stretched from the
pavement to the wall of the prison. She moved
unsteadily and slowly, and Bronson saw that she was
shivering, either from excitement or the cold.
“I guess,” said Gallegher,
in an awed whisper, “that there’s going
to be a scrap.”
“Shut up,” said Bronson.
They stopped a few yards before the
great green double gate, with a smaller door cut in
one of its halves, and with the light from a big lantern
shining down on them. They could not see the clock-face
from where they stood, and when Bronson took out his
watch and looked at it, the girl turned her face to
his appealingly, but did not speak.
“It will be only a little while
now,” he said, gently. He thought he had
never seen so much trouble and fear and anxiety in
so young a face, and he moved towards her and said,
in a whisper, as though those inside could hear him,
“Control yourself if you can,” and then
added, doubtfully, and still in a whisper, “You
can take my arm if you need it.” The girl
shook her head dumbly, but took a step nearer him,
as if for protection, and turned her eyes fearfully
towards the gate. The minutes passed on slowly
but with intense significance, and they stood so still
that they could hear the wind playing through the wires
of the electric light back of them, and the clicking
of the icicles as they dropped from the edge of the
prison wall to the stones at their feet.
And then slowly and laboriously, and
like a knell, the great gong of the prison sounded
the first stroke of twelve; but before it had counted
three there came suddenly from all the city about them
a great chorus of clanging bells and the shrieks and
tooting of whistles and the booming of cannon.
From far down town the big bell of the State-house,
with its prestige and historic dignity back of it,
tried to give the time, but the other bells raced
past it, and beat out on the cold crisp air joyously
and uproariously from Kensington to the Schuylkill;
and from far across the Neck, over the marshes and
frozen ponds, came the dull roar of the guns at the
navy-yard, and from the Delaware the hoarse tootings
of the ferry-boats, and the sharp shrieks of the tugs,
until the heavens seemed to rock and swing with the
great welcome.
Gallegher looked up quickly with a queer, awed smile.
“It’s Christmas,”
he said, and then he nodded doubtfully towards Bronson
and said, “Merry Christmas, sir.”
It had come to the waiting holiday
crowd down-town around the State-house, to the captain
of the tug, fog-bound on the river, to the engineer
sweeping across the white fields and sounding his welcome
with his hand on the bell-cord, to the prisoners beyond
the walls, and to the children all over the land,
watching their stockings at the foot of their beds.
And then the three were instantly
drawn down to earth again by the near, sharp click
of opening bolts and locks, and the green gates swung
heavily in before them. The jail-yard was light
with whitewash, and two great lamps in front of round
reflectors shone with blinding force in their faces,
and made them start suddenly backward, as though they
had been caught in the act and held in the circle of
a policeman’s lantern. In the middle of
the yard was the carriage in which the prisoner’s
wife and her mother had come, and around it stood
the wardens and turnkeys in their blue and gold uniforms.
They saw them, dimly from behind the glare of the
carriage lamps that shone in their faces, and saw
the horses moving slowly towards them, and the driver
holding up their heads as they slipped and slid on
the icy stones. The girl put her hand on Bronson’s
arm and clinched it with her fingers, but her eyes
were on the advancing carriage. The horses slipped
nearer to them and passed them, and the lights from
the lamps now showed their backs and the paving stones
beyond them, and left the cab in partial darkness.
It was a four-seated carriage with a movable top,
opening into two halves at the centre. It had
been closed when the cab first entered the prison,
a few hours before, but now its top was thrown back,
and they could see that it held the two women, who
sat facing each other on the farther side, and on the
side nearer them, stretching from the forward seat
to the top of the back, was a plain board coffin,
prison-made and painted black.
The girl at Bronson’s side gave
something between a cry and a shriek that turned him
sick for an instant, and that made the office-boy drop
his head between his shoulders as though some one had
struck at him from above. Even the horses shied
with sudden panic towards one another, and the driver
pulled them in with an oath of consternation, and
threw himself forward to look beneath their hoofs.
And as the carriage stopped the girl sprang in between
the wheels and threw her arms across the lid of the
coffin, and laid her face down upon the boards that
were already damp with the falling snow.
“Henry! Henry! Henry!” she moaned.
The surgeon who attended the prisoner
through the sickness that had cheated the country
of three hours of his sentence ran out from the hurrying
crowd of wardens and drew the girl slowly and gently
away, and the two women moved on triumphantly with
their sorry victory.
Bronson gave his copy to Gallegher
to take to the office, and Gallegher laid it and the
roll of money on the city editor’s desk, and
then, so the chief related afterwards, moved off quickly
to the door. The chief looked up from his proofs
and touched the roll of money with his pencil.
“Here! what’s this?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t he take it?”
Gallegher stopped and straightened
himself as though about to tell with proper dramatic
effect the story of the night’s adventure, and
then, as though the awe of it still hung upon him,
backed slowly to the door, and said, confusedly, “No,
sir; he was he didn’t need it.”