"Then who would have come to me to ask for your pardon?" inquired the Governor, smiling kindly. "I have read these letters, but they contain nothing that is new to me, and—"
"Nothing new?" interrupted the old man, violently. "That letter shows that Grant fired in self-defence, since the fellow had a pistol in his hand. Isn't that something new?"
"Not to me, for the District Attorney—against whom you seem to have a prejudice, Mr. Baxter—had already informed me of this."
"If you've been listening to him, I suppose there isn't much hope of my getting what I'm after," the old man returned, hotly; "for no man ever spoke more unfairly against another than that man did against my boy."
"You do him injustice," the Governor said, firmly. "He did his duty at the trial in pressing for sentence, and he has done his duty now in laying before me this newly discovered evidence. He has even gone further; he has urged me to accede to your request for your son's pardon."
"The District Attorney?" cried the old man in surprise.
"Yes," the Governor replied.
"Then his conscience has pricked him at last."
"And it is chiefly in consequence of his recommendation that I have decided to pardon your son," the Governor continued.
"I don't care on whose urging it is, so long as it's done," the old man rejoined. "When can the boy come out?" he asked, eagerly.