He was surprised at Wickliff’s reply. It was, “Come on down stairs with me, and I’ll show you.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes; go ahead.”
“You want my parole not to cut and run?”
“Just as you like about that. Better not try any fooling.”
The prisoner uttered a short laugh, glancing from his own puny limbs to the magnificent muscles of the officer.
“Straight ahead, after you’re out of the corridor, down-stairs, and turn to the right,” said Wickliff.
Silently the prisoner followed his directions, and when they had descended the stairs and turned to the right, the sheriff’s hand pushed beneath his elbow and opened the door before them. “My rooms,” said Wickliff. “Being a single man, it’s handier for me living in the jail.” The rooms were furnished with the unchastened gorgeousness of a Pullman sleeper, the brilliant hues of a Brussels carpet on the floor, blue plush at the windows and on the chairs. The walls were hung with the most expensive gilt paper that the town could furnish (after all, it was a modest price per roll), and against the gold, photographs of the district judges assumed a sinister dignity. There was also a photograph of the court-house, and one of the jail, and a model in bas-relief of the Capitol at Des Moines; but more prominent than any of these were two portraits opposite the windows. They were oil-paintings, elaborately framed, and they had cost so much that the sheriff rested happily content that they must be well painted. Certainly the artist had not recorded impressions; rather he seemed to have worked with a microscope, not slighting an eyelash. One of the portraits was that of a stiff and stern young man in a soldier’s uniform. He was dark, and had eyes and features like the sheriff. The other was the portrait of a young girl. In the original daguerreotype from which the artist worked the face was comely, if not pretty, and the innocence in the eyes and the timid smile made it winning. The artist had enlarged the eyes and made the mouth smaller, and bestowed (with the most amiable intentions) a complexion of hectic brilliancy; but there still remained, in spite of paint, a flicker of the old touching expression. Between the two canvases hung a framed letter. It was labelled in bold Roman script, “Letter of Capt. R. T. Manley,” and a glance showed the reader that it was the description of a battle to a friend. One sentence was underlined. “We also lost Private A. T. Wickliff, killed in the charge—a good man who could always be depended on to do his duty.”
The sheriff guided his bewildered visitor opposite these portraits and lifted his hand above the other’s shoulder. “You see them?” said he. “They’re my father and mother. You see that letter? It was wrote by my father’s old captain and sent to me. What he says about my father is everything that I know. But it’s enough. He was ‘a good man who could always be depended on to do his duty.’ You can’t say no more of the President of the United States. I’ve had a pretty tough time of it in my own life, as a man’s got to have who takes up my line; but I’ve tried to live so my father needn’t be ashamed of me. That other picture is my mother. I don’t know nothing about her, nothing at all; and I don’t need to—except those eyes of hers. There’s a look someway about your mother’s eyes like mine. Maybe it’s only the look one good woman has like another; but whatever it is, your mother made me think of mine. She’s the kind of mother I’d like to have; and if I can help it, she sha’n’t know her son’s in the penitentiary. Now come on back.”
As silently as he had gone, the prisoner followed the sheriff back to his cell. “Good-bye, Paisley,” said the sheriff, at the door.