Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1897-04-08
THE QUEENS PARDON.
BY Give HOLLAND.

On the heights of Portland the De-
cember mist, still undispersed by sun
rise hung thick, obliterating all traces
of the prison buildings from the roads,
where several ships of the channel
squadron lay at anchor, and also from
the struggling row of houses at the
base of the northwest slope In the
prison itself there was no light as vet
save in the corridors,up and down which
the ever-alert warders paced monot-
'onoUsly to and fro. In most of the cells
the prisoners slept, tired out with the
previous days hewing of stone and I'M
congenial tasks; but in one the occu-
pant, a man of 35. good looking in
spite of prison garb, close-cropped hair,
and the ravages of toll and despair, lay
on his bed awake.
4 little more than ten years ago he
lad stood in the dock of west of Eng
land city listening to judge with a
hard voice, though with kindly eyes,
Pronouncing sentence of Is years Pc
nal servitude. All that an eloquent
counsel could do had been done for him,
but TO no avail. The evidence seemed
conclusively damnatory, and the fore
y 9
an hour, answered guilty" to the usual
question with a ring of conviction in
his voice. The judges words to Thomas
Harborde fell on deaf ears. He stood
stupidity gazing at a young girl sitting
ut the back of the court in the COM
pany of a sweet-faced old lady, as
though he saw nothing. At last a ward
er touched him on the shoulder, and
the same instant a piteous cry of 20,
Tom! Tom! They're going to take you
away from me-" rang out in the court,
over which the dusk of late afternoon
was creeping. gradually blotting out
the features of those who sat AT all in
shadow. The prisoner turned round as
though about to say something to the
judge on the bench, and then, led by
the warder, he vanished down the dock
stairs to the cells, to be known no long
er as Thomas Harborde, but by -ariOus
numbers: at Portland convict prison as
'.No. 27.''
The sense of innocence brought nIm
contrary to all preconceived notions
of writer's of fiction-no need of sat
isfaction; it merely filled him with
desperate wrath and blacklist despair.
In the early period of his solitary con-
finement he found himself confronted
day in and out with the crushing sense
of the Iegions of hours, minutes and
seconds before he could hope to be a
free man-if ever he were to be one
again. By good conduct-against the
very thought of which he at first re-
belled, refusing to accept any boon at
the hands of fate-he might reduce
these years to two-thirds maybe. What
then, millions of seconds, each one to
INN, a prisoner, an appreciable part of
life; hundreds of thousands of leaden-
footed minutes, each one filled with
poignant despair, must pass ere the
time of release drew near. At work,
under the scorching sun or in the
keen air of winter, in the quarries it
was all the same. These hours and
minutes became embodied in the per-
sons of tine warders and fellow pris-
oners, in the presence of his chains.
From n possibly dangerous man he be-
came almost an inanimate machine;
"a mere cogwheel in the round of daily
toll and prison discipline. At first he
attacked the stone as though he were
revenging his wrongs upon human flesh
and blood, at last he fooled it with the
unthinking regularity of an automaton.
1t takes a year or two to trample the
human element out of a man of Har-
borJie's type; but the effect of stone
walls, silence and brutalized compan-
ions, if slow, is none the less sure. Only
in his case he became an autCmaton in
stead of AN animal.
Through the long December night.
while the mist enshrouded Portland
and restricted the range of the lights
at the Bill TO half mile or less, and
while the sirens sounded from the
lighthouse gallery almost continuously,
answered family by others from YES
sells far out TO sea, or booming
harshly from Others near at hand, /
Harborde lay awake reckoning the
weeks, days, hours and minutes
which comprised the remaining two /
years of his term. He had just dropped /
off into a housekeeping condition when |
his cell door opened. and instead of the |
hard face of the Narder come TO tell him /
to tidy up. he saw the governor and /
chaplain, with the warder in the back
ground.
What could it mean? He sprang up, |
rubbing his eyes, and almost before he
knew what was happening the gov
ernor had told him in few words that |
he had received the queens pardon,
and then, proceeded to read the same
What did it all mean? No other thought /
germinatedain his dSIled brain. FreeI /