“Can you?” exclaimed the Warden in great surprise; “Well, if you can, I’ll give you a good piece of bread and butter, or, anything else you want.”
“I don’t want your bread and butter,” said I “but I will shoe your horse as he has never been shod before.”
“Well take the horse to the shop and see what you can do.”
Of course, I knew that by “bread and butter” the warden meant that if I could shoe his favorite horse so as to prevent him from interfering, he would gladly favor me as far as he could; and I knew, too, that I could make as good a shoe as any horse need wear. I gladly led the horse to the shop where I had so signally failed in pick and tool sharpening, and was received with jeers by my old comrades who wanted to know what I was going to do to that horse.
“O, simply shoe him,” I said.
This greatly increased the mirth of my former shopmates; but their amusement speedily changed to amazement as they saw me make my nails, turn the shoes and neatly put them on. In due time the horse was shod, and I led him to the Warden for inspection; and before him and an officer who stood by him, I led the horse up and down to show that he did not interfere. The Warden’s delight was unbounded; he never saw such a set of shoes; he declared that they fitted as if they had grown to the horse’s hoofs. I need not say that from that day till the day I left the prison, I had everything I wanted from the Warden’s own table; I fared as well as he did, and had favors innumerable.
About once a month I shod that horse, little thinking that he was to carry me over my three years’ imprisonment in just half that time. Yet so it was. For talking now almost daily, in the hospital or in the yard, with the Warden, he became interested in me, and in answer to his inquiries I told him the whole story of my persecution, as I considered it, my trial and my unjust and severe sentence. When he had heard all he said:
“You ought not to be here another day; you ought to go out.”
The good chaplain also interested himself in my case, and after hearing the story, he and the Warden took a lawyer named Bemis, into their counsel, laid the whole matter before him and asked his opinion. Mr. Bemis, after hearing all the circumstances, expressed the belief that I might get a pardon. He entered into the matter with his whole heart. He sent for my son Henry and my first wife, and they came and corroborated my statement about the mutual agreement for separation, and told how long we had been parted. Mr. Bemis and they then went to Governor Briggs, and told him the story, and that I had served out half of my severe sentence, and pressed for a pardon. The Governor after due deliberation consented to their request. They came back to Charlestown with the joyful intelligence. Warden Robinson advised my son, that considering my present mental and physical condition, he had better break the intelligence gradually to me, and so Henry came to me and said, simply, that he thought he would soon have “good news” for me. The next day I was told that my pardon was certain. The day following, at 12 o’clock, I walked out, after eighteen months’ imprisonment, a free man. I was in the streets of Charlestown with my own clothes on and five dollars, given to me by the Warden, in my pocket, I was poor, truly, but I was at liberty, and that for the day was enough.