None was left but one. Edward came at last and stood before his host. Long and thoughtfully he gazed and then passed out. He had place in neither the old nor the new. But the dead man had been his friend. He would not forget it.
CHAPTER LIII.
THE ESCAPE OF AMOS ROYSON.
When Amos Royson's senses returned to him he was standing in the middle of a room in the county jail. The whirl in his head, wherein had mingled the faces of men, trees, buildings and patches of sky illumined with flashes of intensest light and vocal with a multitude of cries—these, the rush of thoughts and the pressure upon his arteries, had ceased. He looked about him in wonder. Was it all a dream? From the rear of the building, where in their cage the negro prisoners were confined came a mighty chorus, "Swing low, sweet chariot," making more intense the silence of his own room. That was not of a dream, nor were the bare walls, nor the barred windows. His hands nervously clutching his lapels touched something cold and wet. He lifted them to the light; they were bloody! He made no outcry when he saw this, but stood a long minute gazing upon them, his face wearing in that half shadow a confession of guilt. And in that minute all the facts of the day stood forth, clear cut and distinct, and his situation unfolded itself. He was a murderer, a perjurer and a conspirator. Not a human being in all that city would dare to call him friend.
The life of this man had been secretly bad; he had deluded himself with maxims and rules of gentility. He was, in fact, no worse at that moment in jail than he had been at heart for years. But now he had been suddenly exposed; the causes he had set in motion had produced a natural but unexpected climax, and it is a fact that in all the world there was no man more surprised to find that Amos Royson was a villain than Royson himself. He was stunned at first; then came rage; a blind, increasing rebellion of spirit unused to defeat. He threw himself against the facts that hemmed him in as a wild animal against its cage, but he could not shake them. They were still facts. He was doomed by them. Then a tide of grief overwhelmed him; his heart opened back into childhood; he plunged face down upon his bed; silent, oblivious to time, and to the jailer's offer of food returning no reply. Despair had received him! A weapon at hand then would have ended the career of Amos Royson.
Time passed. No human being from the outer world called upon him. Counsel came at last, in answer to his request, and a line of defense had been agreed upon. Temporary insanity would be set up in the murder case, but even if this were successful, trials for perjury and conspiracy must follow. The chances were against his acquittal in any, and the most hopeful view he could take was imprisonment for life.
For life! How often, as solicitor, he had heard the sentence descend upon the poor wretches he prosecuted. And not one was as guilty as he. This was the deliberate verdict of the fairest judge known to man—the convicting instincts of the soul that tries its baser self.
At the hands of the jailer Royson received the best possible treatment. He was given the commodious front room and allowed every reasonable freedom. This officer was the sheriff's deputy, and both offices were political plums. The prisoner had largely shaped local politics and had procured for him the the sheriff's bondsmen. Officeholders are not ungrateful—when the office is elective.
The front room meant much to a prisoner; it gave him glimpses into the free, busy world outside, with its seemingly happy men and women, with its voices of school children and musical cries of street vendors.