5 The Beginning

I was awakened the next morning by the tap of Aunt Jane on my door, and, for a moment, as I was yet half way between sleep and waking, I fancied that I was back in boyhood. I knew that sound, sharp, decisive, admitting of no delay, one that had brought me promptly from bed hundreds of times in my life, and I sprang up without delay.

I dressed, and stood a few moments before the window, looking out at the world, this particular corner of the world in which I had been born, whose fresh beauty in its October dress drew from me a sigh of contentment. Then I turned from the window and went downstairs, knowing—how well I should know?—that Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul would not like it if I kept them waiting.

They had regained in the morning much of their Puritan reserve, and I did not blame them, knowing their natures. I knew that I was as much welcome in the morning as I had been the night before. While we ate breakfast, two or three of the farm laborers who had been there in my time came to the house and gave me greeting, a greeting half of welcome and half of suspicion; I could find no fault with the latter because they remembered what I had been, and I was yet to prove what I would be. The same feeling would presently arise in the minds of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, and it was for me, by my acts, to drive it away forever.

A week passed at the homestead, a week of wonderful exhilaration for me. Remember that I was a new man, made over physically, mentally and morally. I walked and rode all over the place and those of my neighbors. I renewed old acquaintance, I took a little part in the farm work, just enough to test my muscles and show my willingness, and I read approval in the eyes of Uncle Paul, although he said nothing.

The happy week came to an end all too quickly, and I knew that I must go as I did not intend to be turned from my purpose. More than once I had caught Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul looking at me with curious inquiring eyes, and I understood the thoughts that were in their minds. Would I stick? Would this sobriety last? That was the question they asked themselves? I had broken their confidence and shattered their hopes so often that they had ample cause for doubt, despite my new look. I broke the news to them when we were at dinner, and I saw a look of dismay come into the eyes of both.

“I shall have to leave in three days,” I said, “I am going to Boston or rather Cambridge, and I mean to stay two years.”

“I thought that you had reformed,” said Uncle Paul, with plain and brusque speech, all his doubts of me flaming up “and here you are, going away on another wild trip that will end God knows how and where!”

I bore the rebuke without flinching because I knew that it was warranted.

“I am not entering upon any long wandering,” I said. “I am going to Cambridge to enter the Harvard Law School, and I shall spend the two years there in hard study. I ask you and Aunt Jane to come and see for yourselves, and also because I shall want to see you. I already have a diploma to practice law in this State, as you know, but I need more knowledge, and I am going to Harvard for it. Then I shall return here, settle down with you two and enter law and public life.”

I spoke earnestly—I felt what I was saying—and genuine earnestness always makes an impression. Only a little doubt was left in Uncle Paul’s eyes, but in Aunt Jane’s there was none at all. Was it because she was the keener or the softer-hearted?

“God bless the boy!” she exclaimed. “He is trying to make a man of himself at last!”

I blushed a little, but I responded fervently.

“Yes, Aunt Jane, I hope to make a man of myself, and I know that you and Uncle Paul will put nothing in the way.”

They made no further protest, but helped me with my preparations and began to take an active interest in the career that I had planned. At first thought it may seem strange that they asked so little about my long absence, but on second thought it will not; they merely regarded it as five years of dissipation, over which it would be better to draw the heavy blanket of silence.

On the day before my departure, I walked down to the post office and I found there a letter for me from Alicia. I would not break the seal in that common place, and I put it in my pocket, keeping it there until I was on one of the hills half way home. There I opened it and read it with a sort of reverence. She had heard that I was going to Cambridge, news no doubt sent by some friend in Carlton, although I intended to inform her myself, and she wrote in part:

“I am glad to know that you are going to Harvard, and I believe you have the strength and the resolution to carry out your plans—have I not every cause for believing it? I believe too that you will become a great man. When we were children together, I thought you the strongest and best of all, and now that you have done something which no other man could have done my belief is confirmed. Oh, Harry, you know how I shall wish for your success and pray for it, if for nothing more except to repeat that I owe you a debt I cannot pay.”

The letter was unsigned, but after I had read it, and reread it, again and again, I tore it into little bits and let the wind blow them away. I would not permit the desire to see it again bring any possible danger upon Alicia, and, when the last white fragment had gone fluttering over the hill, I rose and walked on, my heart quite full, though now my happiness was tinged with sadness because I could not see Alicia’s face, and because I knew she must suffer with folded hands and in silence—woman’s lot—while I should be making for myself a name and a career, or at least striving.

I took the train for the East on the following day and Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul were at the station to tell me good-bye. Some last doubts may have crept into the mind of Uncle Paul—he was a cautious man—but he did not show them.

“I look for a letter from you as soon as you get to Boston, Harry,” he said, and in reply I made a faithful promise. I saw tears in Aunt Jane’s eyes—eyes that rarely shed tears—and she too may have had doubts, but she made a brave effort to hide them.

I arrived at Cambridge, and promptly entered the law school. I was older than most men beginning there, older in years and far older in experience, in fact a man with a short brown beard that I had grown since my prison days, but as I have said I was already a graduate of a law school in Kentucky, and moreover I had a mind reinforced by three years of silent thought and application. Behind me was one of the most powerful motives that fate or chance had ever given. Hence I passed for what I really was, one already on the threshold of the law who wished to give the finishing touch to his studies. A two years’ course I judged would be enough and under the spur of the impulse that I have mentioned I went to work with all the unused energy that had been accumulating in me so long.

The law interested me. I felt that I could pick my way through its mazes and subtleties, and I had profited by a stern experience of life. I was no raw youth standing abashed before theories. Life itself was my theatre and every lesson I learned, I learned with reference to it. I did not intend to devote myself merely to the dry forms of the law, I intended to apply them to the play of human emotions and with this idea before me, my books were not so much cold print and technical language.

I think that as a boy I was by nature studious or would have been had I not wandered astray in the gratification of the senses. Now the instinct, sharpened and ten-fold more powerful, came back to me and my studies were not sufficient to give my mind the active employment that it craved. I roamed omnivorously through the great library at Harvard, and I think I acquired some of that broader culture without which no legal mind is complete.

I wrote often to Uncle Paul and Aunt Jane, and I know that my regular letters, sober in style, carried assurance to them that I had not fallen again by the way. It was one of my greatest pleasures to give this solid comfort to these two, to build up in their minds a temple of faith in myself which in time should become indestructible. When the Christmas holidays came, I went home for a week and they were unaffectedly glad, to see me. The snow was deep on the ground, but both were at the station with the carriage to meet me. Each gave me a long critical look to be assured that I was safe, and then I saw the pleasure of belief in their eyes.

They had made some attempt to decorate the house for me, as much as their Puritanical tastes and natures allowed. A little Christmas holly was about, and big Christmas dinners at which my aunt excelled came every day. They did not shine in adornment either of the house or themselves, but great fires were blazing in the wide fireplaces, and if anything were lacking that made up for all. Nothing is more cheerful than to see the snow outside, to hear the hail rattling on the window panes, and then to turn one’s eyes to the great ruddy flames as they flare up the chimney, and throw warm shadows on the carpet.

I stayed closely at home during the holidays, the snow giving me ample excuse, but I made many inquiries, as was natural, about those whom I knew, and in the course of them I soon arrived at Alicia. She rarely came now to Carlton, I was informed by Aunt Jane, who had all the local gossip at her tongue’s end, and it was said that she remained away, because she did not wish her relatives and friends to know that she was ill-treated and unhappy. Grey had alternate periods of harshness and neglect, but she pretended as far as she could to notice neither.

Poor Alicia! How often that term rose to my lips. I should have written to her but I did not deem it wise, and I had a strong desire to go to Louisville to see her, but that would have been unwisest of all, and so I did nothing, remaining hungry for the sight of her face and the sound of her voice. Yet I was not destined to go back to the East without a word from her, although it was but the cold characters that pen and ink make. She had heard somehow—she seemed to watch over me in a silent manner—that I was at Carlton, and the letter came the day before my departure.

It was a letter wholly of cheerfulness and hope for the future—I appreciated the bravery of a woman who under her circumstances could write this, thinking wholly of my fortunes and nothing of her own. She had heard, she said, of the great progress I was making, and she was confirmed in her belief that I should be a great man, a benefit to my State—how easily women make heroes of undeserving men whom they would help. She sent me Christmas greetings in my home, she said, and ended by wishing me all prosperity and all happiness.

When I returned to Harvard I carried on my studies with renewed zest, and when I came back home for the long summer holidays, I brought my law books with me, resolved to keep on with my law course even then, though not at such pressure. It was not my purpose to make myself wholly a recluse and I went several times to Louisville where I had more or less distant relatives. On one such occasion I fulfilled my great longing and saw Alicia. It came about in the most easy and natural way. I was invited in the usual formal manner to a reception at her house. I was an old friend, from the same village, a former playmate, and it would have seemed odd to leave me out. I accepted. I had some secret tremblings, but it never occurred to me to decline.

When I put on my evening clothes I had a sense of unfamiliarity. I had not taken part in any social affair for five or six years and I feared the awkwardness that comes of disuse, but I slipped on my light overcoat and went into the street. I did not take a cab, preferring to walk to Alicia’s home, and I had gone two or three blocks before I realized that I was following exactly in the steps I made that fatal night—or shall I call it fatal? It was a curious attraction, the power of an event, carried over years afterward, that took me in precisely the same path. I turned at the same turnings, and having gone thus far I went on just as I had begun until I came to the house itself.

The Grey home was one of the largest on Third Avenue which now vies with Fourth as the fashionable street of Louisville, a massive stone building of three floors, in which it was obvious that only people of wealth could dwell. I passed in at the open door and entered a wide hall. In late years Louisville, having grown to a city of a quarter of a million inhabitants, and having enjoyed a great increase of wealth, has taken on much more of a metropolitan aspect, without losing those features of kinship and personal knowledge, which are an aid to social intercourse. Here we are still much related to one another by blood, and we know a man; not only what his name is, but who his relatives are and how he himself stands in the community, so far as character, conduct and fortune are concerned. I was aware despite my long absence that I was going to meet people whom I had seen before and some more or less akin to me.

But I paused a few moments in the wide hall before going into the dressing room, set aside for the men. The interior of the house was heavy and rich, and I saw clearly that two tastes had been struggling for the mastery, Alicia’s simple and quiet, and Grey’s inclining to the garish.

I passed into the dressing room and as I took off my light overcoat, a hand fell without gentleness but with kindness upon my shoulder and a frank, honest, but not very soft voice exclaimed:

“Why, Harry! Harry Clarke, I should never have known you if the servant to whom you gave your name had not told me that it was you! Stand around there in front of me where I can get a good look at you. What a beautiful little brown beard we have! and what an air of wisdom and maturity we wear! But I’m glad to see you again, Harry, I am!”

It was Jimmy Warfield who was speaking, a distant cousin of mine, a man of apparently light and superficial nature, much given to frivolous words, but with depths below that few suspected. He was two or three years older than I, he too had been a bit wild in his youth, but he gave it up early, went into law and then politics with such success that he had recently been elected to the speakership of the House. He was a singularly youthful-looking man, because although young he looked yet younger, and he had an air and a manner that were certainly a tonic.

I flushed under his welcoming touch and voice. He knew what I had been, he knew that years ago I was given up as hopeless, but he must have heard since then of my efforts to enter upon the path which he was treading with such success. His manner, his hearty welcome, for Jimmy Warfield was a man of the world, which does not necessarily mean an immoral man, indicated it.

“I’m glad to see you, Jimmy,” I said, grasping his hand, “You at least have not changed much.”

I could see that I was making a good impression upon Jimmy Warfield, an uncommonly shrewd reader of men —he was confirming in his own mind what he had heard lately of me—and my pleasure continued. He introduced me to others in the room, among them Mr. Cobbett, a fat, elderly millionaire manufacturer with heavy-lidded eyes. Mr. Cobbett had been smitten late in life with a desire to go to Congress, imagining that his money would easily pave the way for him, and now he was always courteous to those whom he thought influential in politics. Hence he was exceedingly polite to Jimmy Warfield.

At this moment the host himself, Mr. George Grey, walking importantly, entered the room. He was really a handsome man in a somewhat aggressive fashion, and to-night he made a better appearance than usual. I thought I saw about him traces of reform, at least of an attempt, begun in a half-hearted and perhaps futile fashion, but making little impression at present upon his heavy features. I should have found him repulsive at any time, but as the husband of Alicia he was well-nigh intolerable to me, yet I must be polite to him in his own house and obey all the conventional forms. I had for the moment a feeling of regret that I had come at all to expose myself to such an ordeal; but it was my second thought that I was bound to encounter him some time or other, and why not the present?

“My cousin, Mr. Clarke, Mr. Grey,” said Jimmy Warfield, accentuating the words “my cousin” in a manner that made my heart warm toward him, “you ought to know him, he is from Mrs. Grey’s home place; they were children together.”

“Glad to know you Mr. Clarke, for your own sake and because you are one of my wife’s old friends,” said Grey with an air of bluff good humor, holding out his hand which I was forced to take, although his touch was most unpleasant to me.

I spoke in the polite manner usual on such occasions, and after a few words he greeted others in the room, welcoming each in turn. I observed him closely. I saw that the man was not without a certain personal magnetism. He was big and handsome, and when he chose to make it so his manner had an air of good fellowship and easy good nature that was bound to make him popular, at least with certain people. It is easy, too, to decry wealth and family but they count everywhere and Grey had both. Yet the observant saw that something was lacking in him; it was the last touch, the indescribable air of quiet dignity, and consideration for the feelings of others that differentiates between the one who is a gentleman and the one who is not.

He talked longest to the manufacturer and it seemed to me, observing them, that they were congenial spirits, although Grey’s was the stronger mind. But I did not linger long there. Jimmy Warfield put his hand on my arm.

“Come, Harry,” he said. “Why waste time here, when there are ladies to be seen and to be heard?”

We went out and into the long drawing room, which connected with other rooms, all now thrown together, and presenting a brilliant aspect. They were already filled with people, and among them many young girls and young married women with the beautiful figures and delicate complexions for which our State is noted. I heard the mellow murmur of talk and laughter, fresh young faces passed before me and dresses shone in brilliant and varying tints under the softened glow of the electric lights. It made a deep impression upon me after so long an abstinence. I love light and color, youth and happiness and an intense thrill of pleasure shot through me.

Alicia was receiving, assisted by several ladies, among them Mrs. Guthrie, the wife of the young member of Congress from the Louisville district, a woman with a fine clear face and a beauty worthy to stand beside that of Alicia, a woman whom I knew I should like and who I hoped would like me.

I hardly knew Alicia in evening dress, proud and a trifle cold, receiving her guests and showing her strength to the world. The pathetic, appealing look that I had seen so often in her eyes was gone and in its place shone calm dignity and reserve. Softened rays from the electric light fell on her thick brown hair, and shot back stray gleams of reddish gold. Shoulders and arms were whiter than snow, and her slender figure was held firmly erect. She inspired me with new respect, a slight feeling of awe, and I should not have presumed to remind her in any manner of what lay between us two only. Just the faintest bit of color came into her cheeks as Jimmy Warfield presented me.

“It’s an old friend, Mrs. Grey, whom you would not have known,” said Jimmy. “In fact I didn’t know him myself at first, he’s changed so much. It’s Harry Clarke, with whom you went to school.”

“I should have known him, Mr. Warfield,” said Alicia. “I believe that women’s eyes are keener than men’s, at least in regard to faces, and Harry and I grew up together. You see I can never call him anything but Harry.”

“Lucky Harry,” said Jimmy with a laugh.

She held out her hand to me. I could not help it —I was intoxicated with the situation and the moment— but I held her fingers just a little longer and little tighter than convention warranted. The extra bit of color rose in her cheeks again, but no one noticed either my action or her response, and then we were talking with every appearance of unconcern.

I stayed only a minute, her duties as hostess allowing me no longer time, and then I passed on to join the light-hearted throng. I was happy that evening, happy to return to my natural element, to the people with whom I belonged, happy in spite of the sight of George Grey as Alicia’s husband with all a husband’s privileges. I was proud of Alicia—I looked often at her—as she bore herself with a strength and dignity that I had before thought impossible to one in her position. Certainly no one there could have inferred from either her face or manner that she was thoroughly wretched or carried in her heart a terrible secret.

Chance placed me in Alicia’s company from time to time, and I never abused the opportunity. Her manner toward me was correct, with just that shade of familiarity which a woman may have toward a man with whom she has grown up, and whom she has always called by his first name. But once when the drift of the crowd had left us alone for a moment she said:

“Harry, I hoped that you would come to-night. You must take up your life in the world, and there are certain ordeals through which both of us must pass.”

“Alicia,” I said, “the past is for you only to revive, even between ourselves. I shall not speak of it of my own accord.”

“Ah, Harry,” she said, in so low a tone that I scarcely heard her, “you have done for me what no other man has done for any other woman.”

It is a terrible thing to be in love with another man’s wife, a terrible thing whether she be bad or good, and these words so gentle, meant so well, gave me a cruel stab. I turned away almost abruptly, although I believe she understood, and the sight of Grey on the other side of the room filled me with a passion of rage and jealousy, of which I was ashamed. Now I understood the deeds men sometimes do.

I found myself quickly becoming a congenial member of this numerous group. I believe that I have the social gift. It was, perhaps, this gift in an over-developed form that led to my first fatal steps, but I can always make myself at home in a crowd. Now I was finding new friends, renewing acquaintance with old ones and discovering distant relatives. Jimmy Warfield watched over me and always supported me.

“It’s because you are going to the Legislature next year, and I shall need your vote,” he said lightly, when I told him how grateful I was.

But I knew better. It was his good heart.

He introduced me to Mr. Guthrie, the young member of Congress, a man with a strong smoothly-shaven face and a calm, steady look. I understood that he had once been a newspaper writer, but through a great and almost involuntary speech had been nominated to the Lower House of Congress. He inspired me at once with confidence and liking and I resolved to mould my career after his as much as possible.

Jimmy Warfield linked his arm in mine a few moments later, and we strolled toward the smoking room.

“You are to become one of us in a year or so, Harry,” he said, “and I mean to tell you a few secrets, secrets that couldn’t be kept from you long. There’s just a bit of intrigue going on here to-night. Cobbett, the fat manufacturer, wants to go to Congress. He means to have the seat of Guthrie. As a man he isn’t within a thousand miles of Guthrie; you can see that for yourself, but he’s very rich, and he has induced Grey who has a powerful family connection to go in with him.”

We came presently in another room upon Cobbett and Grey who were talking earnestly and who raised their heads in some confusion when we entered. Four or five men were with them, one with a flat face and pasty features, Mr. Timothy Applegate, whom I had met earlier in the evening, also possessor of inherited wealth, but in this case allied with a dull mind. Another was Walter Harrison, a man of thirty-five, keen, alert, and handsome.

“Ah, Warfield,” said Harrison, “I was just thinking of you. We were talking politics and that’s a subject of which you know everything.”

“Nobody knows everything about politics,” replied Jimmy, coolly, “and I only stand at the threshold ready for instruction.”

“I hear that you, Clarke, are thinking of a public life,” said Grey indifferently to me. He had dropped the “Mr.” and I could see that he almost looked upon me as his wife’s relative, as we came from the same town and in small Kentucky towns, there is a general kinship more or less distant.

“That’s far ahead,” I replied, “I’ve a year at the law school.”

All of us relapsed into silence, and smoked industriously.

“You knew Mrs. Grey all through her childhood,” said Grey at last.

“In school and before. We practically grew up together.”

“Then you know how brave and spirited she is,” he said, with a sort of insolent pride in his possession that made me quiver though I did not let my face change. I felt a sudden impulse of recklessness too, and I deliberately resolved to lead him on to something about which I had hitherto made up my mind to keep quiet.

“I know it,” I said lightly. “I ought to. She was always a master spirit among us. I was out West then, but it seems to me that since my return I have heard something about her facing down a burglar here until you came in and captured the rascal.”

He laughed exultantly, more I think at the idea of his own triumph than at the thought of his wife’s courage.

“It’s true,” he said, “I caught the fellow redhanded. He had the goods in his pocket. He seemed to be a desperate scoundrel, but I got the drop on him and he knew enough to give up without a struggle.”

I looked him squarely in the eye as he was talking, reading there all his coarse satisfaction at the thought of his easy victory over another man. He also looked at me as he talked, but he did not have the remotest suspicion. In his mind I had no kinship with the supposed burglar of four years ago.

“What became of the man?” asked Jimmy Warfield.

“Sent up for three years,” replied Grey. “I never inquired about him, but as his time was up a year since I suppose he has disappeared somewhere under another name.”

“Poor devil,” said Jimmy Warfield.

“Why do you say that?” asked Grey sharply.

“I say it, because I think it,” replied Jimmy gravely. “I suppose that criminals are of two kinds, those who are criminal by nature, and those who are forced into criminal deeds by circumstances. I’m sorry for both kinds, though not disputing the right or even the necessity of society to punish them.”

My heart felt a fresh suffusion of warmth for Jimmy Warfield. Here was a man who had read human nature kindly, and, all unknowing it, he had spoken words of sympathy for me.

We rose presently and walked back toward the drawing room.

I stayed until about one in the morning, and then I went to tell Alicia good-bye. Grey was not with her at that moment, nor was anyone standing near.

“You are not sorry that you have come?” she asked.

“Do I look as if I were?” I asked.

“You will let me help you if I can in any of your ambitions, will you not?” she asked almost pleadingly. “You will let me make at least a small payment on the great debt I owe you?”

“You owe me nothing,” I replied earnestly, “instead I owe you for an incident which I believe has made a man of me.”

“At any rate do not quarrel with him,” she said, “you will promise me that.”

“I easily promise that,” I replied.

When I turned to go she put her hand in mine a moment and I felt it tremble. I dropped it at once and hastened away. I have said before what a terrible thing it is to be in love with another man’s wife, and at this moment I felt it with all the sting of a new bitterness. It would be best for me to avoid her, never to come into her house again, never to see her again if I could help it, because I was not as strong as she and if absence could not bring to me forgetfulness it might at least bring a softening of the pain.

I found Grey and told him good-night. He was bluff and hearty in his somewhat overdone fashion.

“I hope that we’ll see a lot of you, Clarke, when you finish your studies,” he said. “I’ve some good friends here, Cobbett, Harrison and others with whom you might tie up when you go into political life. There might be a lot in it.”

I thanked him briefly for his advice but I certainly had no intention of “tying up” as he phrased it with such men as Cobbett and Harrison. Then I put on my overcoat and went out into the street which was dark, with sombre clouds floating past the moon. I preferred to walk back to the hotel as I had come, and thereby I bore my part in a coincidence. As I left the residence section and came into the business area I saw a man shabbily dressed propelled suddenly from an establishment with a glittering glass front and brilliant lights. A big figure in the white apron of a bar-tender drew back the foot that had served as a catapult, but stood in the open door way cursing the limp creature on the side walk in a rich and profuse style.

A policeman came up.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“A dead beat,” replied the barkeeper. “He’s done it before, got a drink an’ then had nothin’ to pay for it. It just naturally got my blood up this time an’ I’ve kicked him into the street.”

I stopped. Something in the crouching, frightened figure of the man who had been kicked out seemed familiar to me. I came closer. It was only a boy and the boy was Seth Larkin, my second comrade of the penitentiary and the cell, Seth a crushed object, too weak for the world, his home in the gutter. I felt a great gush of sympathy, aye and of longing too. Here, was an old friend, a comrade, a man who had shared my captivity, and he needed me, he needed my strength to raise him up, and to protect him from the world’s rough hand.

“How much is it?” I asked the bar-tender.

“A quarter this time,” he replied gruffly, “but this is the sixth or seventh time.”

I handed him a two dollar bill.

“Call it square,” I said.

“Good enough,” he replied, taking the bill and going inside.

The policeman looked on philosophically.

“Are you goin’ to try to reform him?” he asked, though without curiosity.

“Yes.”

“It never works,” he said, but not unkindly. “It ain’t in ’em.”

“I think I’ll have a try anyhow,” I said.

He turned his back and walked down the street, whistling softly to himself.

“Come, Seth,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder.

The “Seth” slipped out unawares, but he was too much fuddled to notice my knowledge of his name. He looked up at me, and shrank away as if here was another who would give him a blow. My heart filled with pity. I knew Seth, and I knew that there was no evil in him, only weakness mental and moral. I had come just in time.

“I mean to help you, not to hurt you,” I said, “You haven’t any friends have you?”

“Not that I ever heard of,” he replied, and the reply sounded very pathetic to me.

“Well I’m going to introduce a novelty into your life,” I said, “will you come with me and work for me if I give you good clothes, plenty to eat and a clean bed to sleep in?”

He gazed at me dimly as if he did not understand, and taking him by the arm again I walked on carrying him with me. He made no resistance, and answered my questions vaguely, but on the whole as well as he could. I gathered from his replies that since his release from the penitentiary he had served a short jail sentence in Louisville for petty theft, and had no home, living by begging and odd jobs. It was no wonder that he had been reduced to the mere semblance of a man. Again I reflected that I had just come in time and if Providence takes any hand at all in these humble human affairs of ours it was certainly taking notice that night.

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