“If you ever are, don't be afraid to call on me when I pass. I've got a good heart.”
“Thank you!”
“I've really got too good a heart to be tied up to a prison job,” volunteered Wagg. “I hate to see sorrow.”
“Sorrow is about all you have a chance to see in this place.”
“Yes,” admitted the guard, sliding away.
The warden had given Vaniman a bookkeeper's job. But the prison office was a gloomy place and the windows were hatefully barred Through the bars he could see convict toilers wheeling barrows of dirt. They were filling up a lime-quarry pit within the walls. In the old days convicts had quarried lime rocks. But in the newer days of shops the quarry was abandoned and had been gradually filled with stagnant water. When the prison commissioners decided that the pool was a menace to health, a crew was set at work filling the pit. Vaniman envied the men who could work in the sunshine. He was everlastingly behind bars; the office was not much better than his cell. The bars shut him away from opportunity to make a man's fight for himself. Every time he looked at a window he was reminded of his helplessness. It seemed to him that if he could get out into the sunshine and toil till his muscles ached he would be able to endure better the night of confinement in the cell.
He blurted out that much of confession to Wagg when the guard discovered him pacing in the narrow space a few nights later.
“I sympathize!” whispered Wagg. “I know all about your case!” Then Wagg passed on.
The next night he halted long enough to say that, knowing all about the case from what the newspapers printed, he realized just why Vaniman found it so tough to be locked up.
Then Wagg refrained from saying anything for several nights. The prisoner was quite sure that the guard had something on his mind outside of a mere notion of being polite; in the case of Wagg, so hardened a veteran, politeness to a prisoner would have been heresy. Wondering just what Wagg was driving at, Vaniman found the guard's leisurely methods tantalizing in the extreme. One night the prisoner ventured to take the initiative; he stuck out his hand to signal the guard.