There was just a suspicion of softening from the warder's usual manner in the order.
"Forty-nine" looked up without interest. His eyes were hollow, his cheeks drawn. A deep, hopeless melancholy seemed to weigh upon his whole expression. A year of one of the hardest penitentiaries in the country, with the prospect of years of service yet to complete, left hope far beyond the reach of his crushed spirit. He stood up obediently. His manner was pathetically submissive. His great frame, little more than frame, towered over his guard.
The man stood aside from the doorway and the convict passed out.
The governor looked up from his desk in the center of a large, simply furnished hall. Behind a wrought iron cage at the far end of the apartment stood number "Forty-nine," with the warder close behind.
The governor turned to his secretary and spoke in an undertone. He was a youngish, baldheaded man who had acquired nothing of the hardness of visage to be found in his subordinates. Just now there was something almost like a kindly, sympathetic twinkle in his eyes as he opened out a sheaf of papers, evidently to do with the man just ushered into his presence.
The secretary rose from his seat and walked over to the iron cage. Unfastening a heavy lock he flung it open. To the prisoner, full of the bitterness of his lot, it almost seemed as though he were some wild beast being suddenly released from captivity.
The secretary signed to the warder to bring his charge into the room. This unusual proceeding left the astonished warder at a loss. And it required a sharp order from the governor himself to move him.
"Forty-nine" was conducted to the far side of the desk, and the governor looked him in the face.
"I am pleased to be able to inform you—er—a free pardon has been—er—extended to you."
The announcement was made in formal tones, but the look in the eyes of the speaker was the only human thing to be found in the notorious Alston Penitentiary. Even the worst criminals who were brought into contact with Governor Charles Raymond had, however grudgingly, to admit his humanity, which only left it the greater mystery that the methods of his prison were all so directly opposed to his nature.