The Way of the Strong

by Ridgwell Cullum

Frank made no answer. He was beyond words. He passed through the wicket, which the guard opened for him, and stood outside in the summer evening light—a free man.

But he experienced no feeling of elation. A sort of apathy had got hold of him. His liberty now seemed almost a matter of indifference, and it was merely a mechanical movement that took him away from the frowning gray stone ramparts which had held him for a long twelve months. He had no thought of whither his steps were taking him. That, too, seemed to be a matter of no importance.

He moved on and on, quite slowly. His letter was still unopened in his pocket, whence it had been thrust along with his money. The trail wound its way down the hill upon which the prison stood. It led on, nearly two miles away, to the village of Alston. But it might have been Chicago for all Frank cared.

He was thinking of the past year, and all the events which led up to his incarceration, with the bitterness of spirit which only such unutterable degradation could inspire. Nor, curiously enough, were his feelings directed against the author, or the methods by which his downfall had been brought about. All that had long since exhausted itself during the interminable hours of wakefulness spent in his stuffy cell. His feelings against the man had worn themselves out, that is, they had settled down to a cold, unemotional hatred. No, it was the thought of life itself which haunted him like an evil shadow, from which he would gladly have escaped.

For him life seemed to be ended. Whichever way he looked it was the same. Nothing could help him, nothing could save him from the hideous stigma under which he lay. He was a convict, an ex-convict, and to the hour of his death so he would remain. Wherever he went the pointing finger would follow him. There was no escape. The brutalizing influence under which he had existed for twelve months had got into his very bones.

He told himself that he belonged to the underworld, to the same world to which some of those wretched beings belonged who had only escaped death at the hands of the law on some slight quibble, and with whom he had so recently herded. The daylight could never again be for him. He belonged to the darkened streets where recognition was less easy, where crime stalked abroad, and flitting shadows of pursuer and pursued hovered the night long.

He sank wearily at the roadside. His weariness was of spirit. His body was as hard as nails from the tremendous physical labors of the past year. A morbid craving to review his wrongs was upon him, that and an invincible desire to wait for the gathering of the evening shadows.

The westering sun was shining full upon him. A great waste of open land stretched away toward a purple line of low hills, fringed with a darker shadow of woods. Not a living soul was about, no one but himself seemed to be upon that trail—and he was glad.

For long hours he sat brooding, and, with each passing minute, his morbid fancies grew. He felt that from the beginning he had been doomed to disaster, and he only wondered that he had not realized it before. Was he not a bastard? Was he not a nobody? His father? He never had a father, only the wretched creature whose selfish passions had brought him into the world.

He saw it all in its true colors now. He could more fully understand it. That was the brand under which he was born, and it was a brand which was part of the criminal side of life.