"You've struck it first time," retorted the Deputy Marshal who had smelled the whiskey, found the dime, and slipped the handcuffs on the old man's withered wrists. "Go slow, will you?" and he faced the stranger. "We got to do our duty, ain't we? That's the law, and there ain't no way gittin' round it. And if we make mistakes, what of it? We've got to make mistakes sometimes, or we wouldn't catch half of 'em. The old skeesiks ought to be glad to git free. See?"
Suddenly there came to my mind the realization of the days that were to follow and all that they would bring to him of shame. I thought of the cold glance of his neighbors, the frightened stare of the children ready to run at the approach of the old jail-bird, the coarse familiarity of the tavern lounger. Then the cruelty of it all rose before me. Who would recompense him for the indignities he had suffered—the deadly chill of the steel clamps; the long days of suspense; the bitterness of the first disagreement; the foul air of the inferno, made doubly foul by close crowding of filthy bodies, inexpressibly horrible to one who had breathed all his life the cool, pure air of the open with only the big clean trees for his comrades?
And if at last his neighbors should take pity upon him and drive out the men who had wrecked his old age, and he should wander once more up the brook with his rod over his shoulder, the faithful dog at his heels, and a line of the old song still alive in his heart, what about those eleven months and ten days of which the man-law had robbed him?
O mighty machine! O benign, munificent law! Law of a people who boast of mercy and truth and equal rights and justice to all. Law of a land with rivers of gold and mountains of silver, the sum of its wealth astounding the world.
What's to be done about it?
Nothing.
Better drag a dozen helpless Samanthy Norths from their homes, their suckling babes in their arms, and any number of gray-haired old men from their cabins, than waive one jot or tittle of so just a code; and lose—the tax on whiskey.
CAP'N BOB OF THE SCREAMER
Captain Bob Brandt dropped in to-day, looking brown and ruddy, and filling my office with, a breeze and freshness that seemed to have followed him all the way in from the sea.