Branded. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ prison offices my life settled into a monotonous routine, with nothing eventful or disturbing to mark the passing weeks and months; and by living strictly within the prison requirements, working faithfully, and never once earning even a reprimand from the kindly warden or his deputy, I was given the full benefit of my "good time," and at the end of the third year, with a prison-provided suit on my back and five dollars of the State's money in my pocket, I was paroled.

      Though I have been its beneficiary and victim, and have been made to suffer cruelly under its restrictions, I make here no arraignment of the law which provides in some States—my own among the number—for the indeterminate prison sentence. The reform was doubtless conceived in mercy and a true spirit of sociological lenity toward the offender. But in practice it may be so surrounded with safeguards and limitations, so wrapped up in provisos and conditions, as to completely defeat its own end and reverse its intent.

      Under the law as it stood—and still stands, I believe—in my own commonwealth, I was required to remain in the State; to report, at least once a month, by letter to the prison authorities, and in person to the chief of police in any city in which I might be living; to retain my own name; and to bind myself to tell a straightforward story of my conviction and imprisonment at any time and to any one who should require it. The omission to comply with any of these restrictions and requirements would automatically cancel my parole and subject me to arrest and re-imprisonment for the unexpired period of the original sentence.

      Again I ask you to put yourself in the place of a man paroled under such conditions. With such handicaps, what possible chance can a released man have to secure honest employment? Fortunately for me, I was still only twenty-eight—young and hopeful; and I started out to do my best, saying only that nothing should tempt me to go back to Glendale where, I was told, my mother and sister were still living in retirement and under the shadow of the family disgrace.

      Knowing that the released convict usually heads for the largest city he can reach, thus obeying the common-sense instinct which prompts him to lose himself quickly in a crowd, I planned to do the opposite thing. I told myself that I was not a criminal, and therefore would not follow the criminal's example. I would board an interurban trolley and expend a portion of my five dollars in reaching some obscure town in a distant part of the State, where I would begin the new life honestly and openly in any employment that might offer.

      There was nobody to meet me as I forthfared from the prison gates, but I was not expecting any one and so was not disappointed. None the less, on my way to the central trolley station I had a half-confirmed conviction that I was followed; that the follower had been behind me all the way from the prison street.

      After making several fruitless attempts I finally succeeded in fixing upon the particular person in the scattering sidewalk procession who made all the turns that I made, keeping always a few paces in the rear. He was a man of about my own age, round-faced and rather fleshy. In my Glendale days I should have set him down at once as a traveling salesman. He looked the part and dressed it.

      Farther along, upon reaching the interurban station, I was able to breathe freer and to smile at the qualms of my new-liberty nervousness. Just as I was parting with two of my five dollars for a ticket to the chosen destination my man came up to the ticket window, followed by a hotel porter carrying a grip and a sample case. I saw then how facilely easy it was going to be to take fright at shadows. Evidently the young man was a salesman, and his apparent pursuit of me had been merely a coincidence in corner turnings. And in the recoil from the apprehensive extreme I refused to attach any significance to the fact that he was purchasing a ticket to the same distant town to which I had but now paid my own passage.

      During the leisurely five-hour run across the State the object of my suspicions—my foolish suspicions, I was now calling them—paid no attention to me, so far as I could determine. Save for the few minutes at noon when the interurban car stopped to permit its passengers to snatch a hasty luncheon at a farm-town restaurant, he did not once leave his place, which was two seats behind mine and on the opposite side of the car. On the contrary, like a seasoned traveler, he made himself comfortable behind the barricade of hand-baggage and wore out the entire time with sundry newspapers and magazines. Moreover, at our common destination he did not follow me to the one old-fashioned hotel; instead, he led the way to it, and was buying a cigar at the little counter show-case when I came up to bargain, with another of my precious dollars, for the supper, lodging and breakfast which were to launch me upon the new career.

      After this, I saw the fat-faced traveling man but twice, and both times casually. At supper he had a small table to himself in one corner of the room; and the following morning, when I went out to lay siege to my new world, he was smoking in the hotel office and again buried in a newspaper. Two hours later I had found employment driving a grocer's delivery wagon, and in the triumph of having so soon found even this humblest of footholds in a workaday world, I had completely forgotten him.

      Having thus made my cast for fortune and secured the foothold, it took me less than a week to learn that I had made a capital mistake in choosing a small town. Under that condition of my parole which required me to report in my true character to the town marshal I assured myself that I might as well have published my story in the county newspaper. Before the end of the week half of my customers on the delivery route were beginning to look askance at me, and when the Saturday night came I was discharged. I knew perfectly well what was coming when the boss, a big-bodied, good-natured man who had made his money as a farmer and was now losing it as the town grocer, called me into his little box of an office at the back of the shop.

      "Say, Weyburn; when I asked you where you had been working before you came here, you didn't tell me the truth," was the way he began on me.

      "I told you I had worked in a bank in Glendale," I protested; "which was and is the truth."

      "I know; but you didn't tell me that you'd put in the last three years in the pen, and were out on parole."

      "No, I didn't tell you that. But I would have told you if you had asked me."

      "I can't stand for it," he grumbled, chewing at the unlighted cigar which was his Saturday night indulgence. "And if I could, the customers wouldn't. I suppose as many as a dozen women have been to me in the last few days. They say they can't afford to be watchin' the back door every time you come 'round with the groceries. You see how it is."

      I saw; but I was still foolish enough to try to stem the pitiless tide.

      "Would it make any difference if I were to say that I was as innocent of the crime for which I was convicted as any of these frightened women?" I suggested.

      "They all say that," was the colorless retort. "The point is, Weyburn, that you was convicted. There ain't no gettin' 'round that. You've worn the stripes, and you'll just have to make up your mind to live it down before you can expect people to forget it."

      If I hadn't been the wretched victim of this paradox it might have provoked a smile.

      "How am I ever going to live it down, Mr. Bucks, if nobody will give me a chance?" I asked.

      "I know," he agreed readily enough. "But I'm losin' money here, every day, as it is, and I can't afford to make experiments. I'm sorry for you, honestly, Weyburn; but you see how it is."

      "Yes, I see," I returned. "You think I ought to be given a chance, but you prefer to have somebody else give it to me. I don't blame you. Perhaps under similar conditions I'd do the same thing myself. Pay me and I'll disappear."

      He did pay me, and tried to give me two dollars more than the agreed weekly wage, generously putting it upon the ground of the lack of notice. I shall always be glad that I still had pride enough left to refuse the charity. Even at this early twisting СКАЧАТЬ