The Mena weekly star., 1896-12-23
HIS DAY OF FREEDOM.

So thoroughly had the dull discipline of the saddlery shop been imbedded into their beings that not one of the others looked up when the messenger came in, and, after saluting the guard standing at his lighthouse-like desk, ap- proached and tapped STAB on the shouI- der and beckoned him to follow. But he knew. The convict understood. It was liberty at last. For 22 years he had awaited it. And although the mes seDger's summons might have meant thousand different things to any other of the saddlery workers, it meant to him only that the pardon had final 1y come. He felt as he followed the messenger, doglike in his docile sub mission, that this was the last time he would cross the threshold of the sad dlery shop.
 Twentytwo years!
 The time had passed in such sullen, dcaden fashion, that after the first year or two he had become uncertain as to whether he had counted the day once of twice. He had not cared to inquire of the guard, for the sweet puzzle of try ing to figure out whether it were the month of May or July was an occupa- ton for his mind, and it would have been distress if he had been set right at the time that lie mistook Thanks giving day for Christmas, for, so long as he was not positive of the point, he had the somber satisfaction of ceic- bruting both. The only continuity of thought which lived to support him was the thought that certainly at some time his innocence would be shown and he would be discharged.
 He steadily thought of that Sun day afternoon when he had lain on the bed and had danced the two-year-old boy and had allowed him to climb re- lentlessly over him, even the pressure off the hahy shoes upon his cheek hay ing, as he often remembered. been sweet to him. He recalled that the careful wife had spread red comfort CT over tine white coanteFPane, so that the latter might not be disordered in the rough play. How many times had he remembered that! In the solitude of his cell he had dwelt upon that Sun day afternoon when he had played with the baby, until every detail-every crack of the wallpaper, which showed that the new house was settling, every figure of the design of the ceiling up to which he had looked--was as plain to him as though now before his eyes he was called upon to describe it.
 And now the time had come. The time for which he had waited so long apd so patiently. He had yearned for it unceasingly. Studying over the peculiarities of the crime with the com mission of which he had been charged, he had been confident that after years the robber whom he had surprised in an assault upon his own especial enemy would be discovered. and it would be shown that. although he had openly hated the man who he had found dead at his feet, still he was not that mans murderer. 1t would be known at last that this sentence of his to life Imprisonment was a monstrous injus- tice, and he would be set free again. He would be permitted to go back, and from an incognito point of view see his boy. The boy, growing, could have known nothing of him, of course. The mother, who, he sometimes hor- .ribly thought, half believed him guilty, would have safeguarded from the child the dreaded secret. He knew that, for he had in- sisted upon this course himself on the day before the party of conyicts, of which he was a member, were taken down to the train, prison-bound. He had pledged her to silence in this re- gard. and, ranI<led by the bitter thought that she herself wayered concerning his guilt, ile had supplemented the ob- Iiration by demanding that not by visit Or letter or other communication