“Good-bye, sir; I’m much obliged,” said the prisoner. Not another word was said.
That evening, however, good Mrs. Raker told the sheriff that, to her mind, if ever a man was struck with death, that new young fellow was; and he had been crying, too; his eyes were all red.
“He needs to cry,” was all the comfort that the kind soul received from the sheriff, the cold remark being accompanied by what his familiars called his Indian scowl.
Nevertheless, he did his utmost for the prisoner as a quiet intercessor, and his merciful prophecy was accomplished—Edgar S. Paisley was permitted to serve out his sentence in the jail instead of the State prison. His state of health had something to do with the judge’s clemency, and the sheriff could not but suspect that, in his own phrase, “Paisley played his cough and his hollow cheeks for all they were worth.”
“But that’s natural,” he observed to Raker, “and he’s doing it partially for the old lady. Well, I’ll try to give her a quiet spell.”
“Yes,” Raker responds, dubiously, “but he’ll be at his old games the minute he gits out.”
“You don’t suppose”—the sheriff speaks with a certain embarrassment—“you don’t suppose there’d be any chance of really reforming him, so as he’d stick?—he ain’t likely to live long.”
“Nah,” says the unbelieving deputy; “he’s a deal too slick to be reformed.”
The sheriff’s pucker of his black brows and his slow nod might have meant anything. Really he was saying to himself (Amos was a dogged fellow): “Don’t care; I’m going to try. I am sure ma would want me to. I ain’t a very hefty missionary, but if there is such a thing as clubbing a man half-way decent, and I think there is, I’ll get him that way. Poor old lady, she looked so unhappy!”