“Your brain is turned, old gentleman.”
The old man laughed and looked up into his questioner’s face with a quizzical expression.
“My brain is clear, my friend,” he replied, in a clear, harsh tone. “I have come from a prison—the world is strangely altered since I was in it before.”
“In it before? Why, what do you mean? I suppose you will try and persuade me that you have been dead and have risen from the grave.”
“Figuratively speaking, I have—I have been dead to the world—in prison at Sing Sing. Mark me well—Sing Sing Prison—for twenty years—to-day I was released. See me now. I am old, decrepit, hardly able to walk. Once I stood erect, my hair was as black as the raven’s wing, and now—look at me, a wreck without home or friends. Wife, children, all gone! I have never seen nor heard of them since the day I was taken out of yonder house a prisoner, by the unjust, hard, and cruel decree of a so-called court of justice. Twenty years! A prisoner, buried alive, as it were.”
“You had committed a crime?”
“No. I was innocent, but powerful conspirators plotted against me—the evidence was perjured—and I—I—was entombed.”
“You say you lived in yonder house twenty years ago?”
“Yes, and no man carried his head higher than I did. I was rich—but bah! what is the use of rehearsing those things to a stranger! Hardened as you are by association with crime, you would not believe my story. You would think that I was romancing. Things have sadly changed in this neighborhood.”
“You may bet they have.”