The Daughter of a Republican

by Bernie Babcock

From the corners of his cell dark faces leered at him; cruel, sharp claws closed around his limbs and icy fingers grasped his throat—yet he was not dead. Outlines of things he saw became to him living creatures of destruction and crouched over him, grinning in his face and tearing him to bits—yet he was not dead. Snarling beasts sank their fangs into his flesh, a thousand poison insects rushed and swarmed upon him, and he felt the virus of their sting bounding through his body—yet he lived.

Slimy serpents wriggled over him, thrusting their forked tongues into his nose and ears, and when he grabbed frantically to tear them away they had gone.

A fire burned within him and he tore his flesh and hair, while death like a dark shadow hovered nearer and nearer, closing in slowly but surely. The end of Damon Crowley was not as a child falls to sleep nor as a Christian steps into the great beyond.

It was a time of screams and groans; of frantic clutchings and hard grapplings. Those in neighboring cells were glad for once that the walls were thick and the bolts secure.

* * * * *

Gilbert Allison imagined he would feel better when he knew that Damon Crowley was securely lodged under lock and key; but such was not the case. The knowledge of this only seemed to press some real or imaginary burden closer to him. Then he imagined that he would perhaps feel at peace with the world and himself when white-robed justice had had her perfect course, and the victim of a nation's sin had been hung by the neck until dead. But even the news of the tragic death of the murderer did not prove a cure for his nameless and indefinable ill-feeling.

Then it occurred to him that perhaps his name had not been taken from over the doors of the establishment of which he had so long been a part. Being fully resolved to completely sever his connection with the business, he looked upon this as a necessary step, and not without some small hope that it might help a little toward restoring his upset conscience.

Turning a corner, he raised his eyes. There, in the glow of the full sunlight, blazed the richly-wrought words, "Allison, Russell & Joy." They looked positively ugly to him and he felt that he had been injured by the other members of the firm. Entering the establishment to request that the sign be altered he came upon a trio discussing trade items, and the old familiar phraseology fell upon his ears like jangling voices.

As he passed out an old customer slapped him familiarly on the back and asked after business. Hardly had he escaped this one before another grasped his hand and inquired in jovial manner how times were. Then a drummer approached him, and, on being informed that he was no longer connected with the trade interests, assured him that the trade had suffered a loss. As he halted a moment in front of a hotel, a half-intoxicated man with a tale of woe, because of having been ordered out of the palatial sample room of the late liquor dealer, drew some attention to him and increased his feeling of disquiet and irritability.