The governor nodded understandingly. “What sort of a record has he made here?”
“Oh, fair enough!” said the warden. “Those man-killers from the mountains generally make good prisoners. Funny thing about this fellow, though. All the time he's been here he never, so far as I know, had a message or a visitor or a line of writing from the outside. Nor wrote a letter out himself. Nor made friends with anybody, convict or guard.”
“Has he applied for a pardon?” asked the governor.
“Lord, no!” said the warden. “When he was well he just took what was coming to him, the same as he's taking it now. I can look up his record, though, if you'd care to see it, sir.”
“I believe I should,” said the governor quietly.
A spectacled young wife-murderer, who worked in the prison office on the prison books, got down a book and looked through it until he came to a certain entry on a certain page. The warden was right—so far as the black marks of the prison discipline went, the friendless convict's record showed fair.
“I think,” said the young governor to the warden and his secretary when they had moved out of hearing of the convict bookkeeper—“I think I'll give that poor devil a pardon for a Christmas gift. It's no more than a mercy to let him die at home, if he has any home to go to.”
“I could have him brought in and let you tell him yourself, sir,” volunteered the warden.
“No, no,” said the governor quickly. “I don't want to hear that cough again. Nor look on such a wreck,” he added.
Two days before Christmas the warden sent to the hospital ward for No. 874. No. 874, that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in and kept himself upright by holding with one hand to the door jamb. The warden sat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands a folded-up, blue-backed document.