Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1897-04-22
THE QUEENS PARDON.
BY Give HOLLAND.

Use, nung thick, OblIteratlng 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 ever-alert warlers 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
congenial tasks; but in one the occu-
pant, man of 50, good looking in
spite of prison garb, close-cropped hair,
and the. ravages of toll and despair, lay
on his bed awake.
A 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 TO no avail. The evidence seemed
conclusively damnatory, and the fore
man of the jury, after an absence of half
an hour, answered guilty" to the usual
question with 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
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 a piteous cry of 30,
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 various
numbers: at Portland convict prison as
mo. 27.'
The sense of innocence brought him
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-
fnement he found himself confronted
day in and out with the crushing sense
of the legions of hours, minutes and
q
free man-if ever he were to be one
again. BY good conduct-against the
very thought of which he at nrst re-
belIed, 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, a 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 quarrles II
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 a possibly dangerous man he be-
came almost an inanimate machine;
q 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
bortle'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 automaton in
stead of an animal.
Through the long December night
while the mist enshrouded Portland
and restricted the range of the light!
at the Bill to half mile or less, anC
while the sirens sounded from thu
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 thu
weeks, days, hours and minute!
which comprised the remaining twt
years of his term. He had just dropped
off into housekeeping condition wheI
his cell door opened, and instead of tht
hard face of the warCler come to tell hin
to tidy up, he saw the governor ant
chaplain. with the warder in the back
ground.
What could it mean? He sprang up
rubbing his eyes. and almost before h
knew what was happening the gov
ernor had told him in a few words tina
. he had received the queens pardon
and then proceeded to read the same
What did it all mean? No other though
terminated in his dulled brain. Free
Tree to go where he willed! Free to wall
out of the gaol gates! Never to return
within the stone walls which had shu
him in from the outside world. as surel,
as though no other world than that con
tanned within them existed. The prison
bell changed, startling him into stat
of wakefulness. The governor had fin
ished reading the official-looking paper
and with the conclusion of the forma
part of his duty he added a few word
of congratulations. Harborde seemed I,
have no comprehension of their mean
5uo He remained standing IN the cen