The Van Buren press., 1897-05-01
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 yet
save in the corridors,up and down which
the eyer-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 un-
eongenial tasks; but in one the occu-
pant, man of b, good looking in
spite of prison garb, close-cropped hair,
and the ravages of toll and despair, lay
on his bed awake.
\ little more than ten years ago he
Lad stood in the dock of a west of Eng.
land city listening to a 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 10 no avail The evidence seemed
conelusiyely damnatory, and the fore
man of the jury. after an absence of half
an hour, answered "guilty" to the usual
question with a ring of conviction in
his voice. The judges words TO Thomas
Uarborde fell on deaf ears. He stood
stupidity gazing at young girl sitting
at the back of the court in the com
pany of a sweet-faced old lady, as
though he saw nothing. AT last ward
er touched him on the shoulder, and
the same instant 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 blofting 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 various
numbers: at Portland convict prison as
mo. 2Z."
The sense of innocence brought him
contrary to all preconceived notions
of writers 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-
fnement he found himself confronted
day in and out with the crushing sense
of the legions of hours, minutes and
seconds before he could hope to be Il
free man-if ever he were TO be one
ngain. BY good conduet-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
him, prisoner, an appreciate part of
life; hundreds of thousands of leaden-
footed minutes, each one filled with a
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 the warders and fellow pris-
oners, in the presence of his chains.
From n possibly dangerous man he be
came almost an inanimate machine;
n mere cogwheel in the round of daily
toll and prison discipline. At first he
attacked the stone as though he were
Jevenging his wrongs upon human flesh
and blood, at last he fooled il with the
unthinking regularity of an automaton.
1t takes year or two to trample the
human element out of a man of Har-
borde's type; but the effect of stone
walls, silence and brutalized compan-
ions, il slow, is none the less sure. Only
in his case he became an automaton 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 a mile or less, and
while the sirens sounded from the
lighthouse gallery almost continuously.
answered family by others from yes
sells far out 10 sea, OF booming
harshly from others near at hand,
Hlrborde lay awake reckoning the
weeks, days, hours and minutes
which comprised the remaining two
years of his term. He had just dropped
off into half-sleeping condition when
his cell door opened, and instead of the
hard face of the warder come to tell him
10 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
crnOr had told him in few words that
he had received the queens pardon.
and then proceeded to read the same.
What did it all alean? MOTHER thought
Eerminaied In rs dnlled brain. Freel