Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1858-10-08
LIE, FRIDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 8, 1853

that it dropped forever between me and
the one being who in her held all things
for which l lived, | felt a quick cold
shudder of agony run through me, and
my knees smote together like towards.
| said no more, but went with my captor
The first nightin jail All that was
terrible! The clammy cchoing stones
of the floor over which | paced in the
darkness did not hurt me in their hard
ness. The foul coarse pallet on which
at intervals l threw myself in my be-
wildere6 WEAKNESS, did not clafe me by
its coffin narrowness. / was beyond hurt
from such things; for in the FIVE min
utes between my lodgings and my cell |
had become aware that ! was brought to
position whose sublime awfulness could
not be equalled by anything elso on
earth, Quicker by far than I can write,
yet in this channel had my thoughts
run.
My brother, three days ago, gave me
in private heavy draft to be collected
at another banking house, drawn in his
favor by one Of his correspondents and
endorsed by another. ! remember that
he looked restless when he gave it to me
that he hurried from the room immedi-
ately afterward; | presented the draft
received the money; the books, which
keep, bear no account of it, He forged
the paper. | am the suspected one. I
have no means Of proving my innocence,
unless, perhaps, by proving his guilt
That, most like, is impossible At any
rate, what terrible step for a man to
take against his dead mothers only other
child And he has a lovely wife whom
it would slay. Yet | myself havoc,
God shut out her image from me II
must not see it; ! shall go mad
In this grove my thoughts rolled back
and forward through the night. Facing
this alternative ! stood till the day Of
my trial-just one month. Ny brother
came often TO see me he layishcd tears
and embraces upon me; be retained for
me the best of counsel-yet he always
seemed like one in delirum of fever,
and ever, just as the turnkey swung back
the heavy door to let him out, he would
stop for moment, trembling, and with
his lips half opened, as if about TO say
something more to mc--then, without
meeting my eye, he would rush from the
cell. Suffering as was, suffering still
more as / was about TO be, from the con-
sequences Of his sin--T could pity hin
deeply. | could forbear with the COW.
ardice which could not confess, for
knew how priceless liberty must be to {
man who, losing it, leaves his other sou
in that most heart-broken of all widow.
hood-the widewhood of a conyict's wife
She whom loved visited me many times
always bringing me sweet messages il
her presence from the birds, and the
flowers, and the free sky outside--always
talking with a voice intensely sustained
into chccrfulncss, Of my acquittal and
restoration TO cur old hopes. told hen
| was innocent, and she believed me.
could not tell her who was guilty.
My trial came on. / need not pain
myself with a long recital of the thronged
court, the weary questionngs and cross
questionings, the audible silence of the
crowd when the pleas were made, the
moment whose shadow fell upon me when
the foreman solemnly said. guilty
that other moment when ] was condemned
to the awful alenage of prison for the
fifteen years to come.
Then / parted from home and friends.
Ny brother did not bid me goodbye he
lay sick of raging fever, on whose
chances hung life. But she, the holy,
the heroic-who had borne all things,
came to see me 90. She clasped my
manaclcd hands in her own; she pressed
one long, last kiss upon the convicts
lips, and said, with solemn cheerful
ness, II will wait for you - Then,
with a superstition which, frivolous
though it seem, still crept into the aw-
fulnoss of that hour, stopped my watch,
and vowed inwardly that its hands should
never more move till we met again.
After that, the gates of my prison
opened to let in but one message from
the life outside. The chaplain brought
me a lock Of well-known soft brown hair,
and told me. with tear in his eye, that
an old man had given IL to him for me,
saying, "My daughter is with Cod
She died whispering that she would wait
for John Markham"
endured the knowledge Of her death
with benumbod patience, uncomplain-
ingly, rarely weeping a single drop. |
went through the unvarying round of
day labor in the prison yard with steady
mechanical industry which surprised my
taskmaster, for heretofore | had been
tainted as "the weak gentleman, '"white
fingers" and whatever other eplthct or
insult the hardened hullies Of discipline
are accustomed, at discretion and with
out fear Of chastisement, TO confer upon
the wrctched in their grasp. At even
ing, held up the tress into the faint
twilight which just nuttered through my
CRATES, and, kissing it, seemed 10 see her
by mc--for / could never think Of her
as dead. That realization was kindly
spared me by the fact that no new void
can be felt, no new unnaturalness, in the I
eternal void and unnaturalncss Of
prison.
But one night coming from work !
found the tress gone. Asking the turn
key for it, ! was told, Prisoners are
allowed no useless articles" From that
I knew she whom I loved was
dead Like a wild freshet the agony Of
the knowledge gushcd upon me. With
it came the memory Of my burning
ec0rn Of man snent upon