He kept one hand on Champney's as if fearing to lose him, with the other he pulled forward a chair from the wall and placed it near his own; he sat down and drew Champney into the other beside him.
"I came up on the afternoon train; I got out yesterday."
"It's so unexpected. The chaplain wrote me last month that there was a prospect of this within the next six months, but I had no idea it would be so soon—neither, I am sure, had he."
"Nor I—I don't know that I feel sure of it yet. Has my mother any idea of this?"
"I wasn't at liberty to tell her—the communication was confidential. Still she knows that it is customary to shorten the—" he caught up his words.
"—Term for exemplary conduct?" Champney finished for him.
"Yes. I can't realize this, Champney; it's six years and four months—"
"Years—months! You might say six eternities. Do you know, I can't get used to it—the freedom, I mean. At times during these last twenty-four hours, I have actually felt lost without the work, the routine—the solitude." He sighed heavily and spoke further, but as if to himself:
"Last Thanksgiving Day we were all together—eight hundred of us in the assembly room for the exercises. Two men get pardoned out on that day, and the two who were set free were in for manslaughter—one for twenty years, the other for life. They had been in eighteen years. I watched their faces when their numbers were called; they stepped forward to the platform and were told of their pardon. There wasn't a sign of comprehension, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an eyelid—simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything, as I was till—till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel again."
"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll recover tone here among your own—your friends and other men."