“I would cheerfully do it if it did not seem to be presumptuous on the part of a stranger.”
“Don’t trouble your mind about that,” said the store-keeper, with a laugh; “the counterfeiter is a stranger too, so matters will be even. There’s the sheriff, in front of the post-office; do you know him? No? Let us step over, and I’ll introduce you; and I’ll wish you more luck than you’ll have in the jail, if that will be of any consolation.”
Mr. Morton found Sheriff Towler quite a pleasant man to talk to, and perfectly willing to have his prisoners improve in body and mind by any method except that of getting out of jail before their respective terms of imprisonment had expired, or before they were by superior authority ordered to some other place of confinement, as he, the sheriff, wished might at once be the case with John Doe, the man who was awaiting trial for passing bad bank-notes. All this the sheriff said as he walked with Mr. Morton from the post-office to the jail. Arrived at the last-named building, the sheriff instructed his deputy, who had charge of the place, to admit Mr. Morton at any time that gentleman might care to converse with any of the prisoners.
The teacher walked first through the upper rooms, where a small but choice assortment of habitual drunkards and petty thieves were confined; these, as Sam Wardwell’s father had predicted, either declined to converse or talked stupidly for a moment or two, and then begged either tobacco or money to buy it with. Still, Mr. Morton thought he saw in these wretched fellows some material to work upon, when time allowed. Then he went below, and the deputy took him to the small grated window in the door of the strong cell for desperate offenders, and said to John Doe that a gentleman who was visiting the prisoners would like to speak with him. The deputy went away immediately after saying this, and Mr. Morton quickly put his face to the grated window. A face appeared on the other side of the grating, and then, as Mr. Morton placed his hand between the bars, which were barely wide enough apart to admit it, he felt his fingers grasped most earnestly by the hand of the prisoner. If Mr. Wardwell could have felt that grasp and seen the prisoner’s face, he might have greatly changed his opinion of smart prisoners in general.
Somehow John Doe preferred to restrict his remarks to whispers, and for some reason Mr. Morton humored him. The interview lasted but a few moments, and ended with a plea and a promise that another call should be made. Meanwhile, Mr. Wardwell had stood on a corner that commanded the jail, and when the teacher reappeared the merchant asked, “Well?”
“They are a sad set,” Mr. Morton admitted.
“I told you so,” said Wardwell, rubbing his hands, as if he were glad rather than sorry that the prisoners were as bad as he had thought them. “And how did you find that rascally counterfeiter? I’ll warrant he didn’t care to see you?”
“On the contrary,” replied the teacher, gravely, “he was very glad to see me. He begged me to come again. He was so glad to see some one not a jailer that he cried.”
“Well, I never!” exclaimed the merchant. And he told the truth.
It was soon after this first visit of a series that lasted as long as Mr. Morton remained in the village that the boys changed their base-ball ground. They had generally played in some open ground on the edge of the town, but the teacher one day asked why they should go so far, when the entire square on which the court-house and jail stood was vacant, except for those two buildings. The boys spent a whole recess in considering this suggestion; then they reported it favorably to the other boys of the town, and it was adopted almost unanimously that very week; and Canning Forbes could always remember even the day of the month on which the first game was played, for he, as a “fielder,” caught the ball exactly on the tip of the longest finger of his left hand, and he stayed home with that finger, and woke up nights with it, for a full week afterward.