The St. Johns herald., 1896-05-02
BIG TOM, CONVICT.

There were those who said that con- vict 128O was innocent of the crime which sent him to prison for such long term of years, but that there was scarce hope of his ever being free man again. They meant that he was tech nically guilty. He had sought to save woman from beating at the hands of her husband, and in the struggle and excitement he had struck blow which caused the death of the man. It was accident, in sense, but 1t was also manslaughter. No man who is man will stand by and see a woman beaten, and yet if he interferes he must take his chances with the law. Big Tom, as the convict was sometimes referred to, was, like most big men, child ill his gentleness and good nature. He did not complain, but he grieved. He thought of the years and years which must drag away before the prison doors would open to him, and he moved about like weak, old man. The prison officials felt pity for the man, but convict is con- vict, and all must be treated ahke-all who show obedience to the rules. They sized him up as childlike and good na tured, and yet they said to each other as they talked of him:
 Look out for Big Tom He will break loose some day and do some des perate thing!'
 They thought it would come during the first six months of his term-then during the second-then they almost became afraid of him. Men who are slow to anger-who go on grieving, breeding and bearing a mental burden for weeks and months are devils when the climax comes.
 Big Tom had the management of the trip hammer in the machine shop. Had they put him in the shoe shop or tailor shop he would have rebelled at once. His place was beside the biggest piece of machinery in the shops, two pieces of machinery, as it were-Tom and Trip. Day by day and week by week and month by month, as the ponderous shook the very earth for yards around, making the convict smile and look proud, the guards had an eye on him and kept saying to each other:
 "It will come. It is only delayed. When he breaks loose, he will kill some one and have to be killed in turn. !"
 Nearly half of the second year had passed, and the giant convict had never even sulked, when one day there came into the shop as sightseers a husband, wife and little girl or years old. Children are seldom seen in prisons, and it is a rare thing that they are taken into the shops in the yards. If any one in that prison knew that convict 1280 had a daughter-a fair haired, handsome child, who could only walk alone when the jury pronounced his verdict of "guilty''-he had for gotten the fact. His wife had visited him as often as visitors were allowed, but the child had never been seen with in the grim walls. Knowing that her husband had killed a man by accident, | the wife could bear to see him wearing the horrible stripes of a convict, but to let the child look upon him, to gaze in wonder at the iron bars, to ask why all those men were there, thousand times no! And so this was the first child Big Tom had seen since the heavy doors shut | him i'll. Father, mother and child came close to him and gazed at the ponderous hammer with wondering eyes, You would have argued that the sight of the child would have softened the convict's s l heart and brought tears to his eyes, but it did not. It brought feeling of mad ness, of desperation, of frenzy. To save a woman from a brutal beating at the hands of drunken, worthless thing not fit to be classed with men he had struck a blow.
 A jury had called it murder i'll the second degree, and he was here III prlS- on on a sentence almost never ending. He had been wronged, and the knowl- edge of it fired his heart and brought the long expected outbreak. With sud- den cry which startled every one ln the noisy shop Big Tom made spring for ward, seized the child in his arms, and there was a shout of defiance on his lips as he held her at arms length and glared about him. The mother of the child gasped for breath and staggered back to the wall and sank down. The father stood staring, as if struck dumb, but presently held out his hands iH si- lent supplication. Big Tom glowered end muttered in reply. He was con- vict, a childless father. He was dead 10 his child-she was dead to him. He could not make another fathers heart ache and throb and grieve as his did, but he would secure revenge.
 After muttering he was silent. No one cried out Guards and convicts were seemingly stupefed. There was the hum If machinery, but not of voices. Con- victs turned from forge and anvil and bench and lathe and held their breath. The two shop guards leaned forward in their chairs and looked and looked, but they did not move or cry out.
 "What will he do with the child?"
 The two men working at the trip hammer with Big Tom had fallen back. He had control of the machinery which worked it. The answer to the question could be read in his eyes. Men had wronged him under cover of the law. He had been deprived of liberty, de- graded and disgraced. Death were more merciful than such a sentence as his, and in dying he would secure revenge. A piece of iron had been left under the Lo-,,,or Tharo xraS hoard fha G0Und nj