“Don’t you think he might be better now, daddie?” she pleaded.
“Yes!––I guess he is getting pretty nearly wised up now. He has stopped his swearing and yelling. That’s a good sign. That last cry of his was the first for half an hour. You run along home, girlie, and Phil and I will go in and see how he is.”
“You won’t keep him tied up there all night, dad?”
“Not unless I can’t help it, Eilie.”
She pouted and stamped her foot impatiently.
“I just won’t go home till you tell me for sure. I 86 couldn’t sleep if I thought a man was roped up all night like he is now.”
Her father smiled indulgently.
“Foolish little woman! You sleep other nights, yet every minute of the days and nights you live there are men all over the world who, both literally and metaphorically, are chained, and roped, and lashed, and dungeoned; men whose lives are a racking agony, to whom day and night are alike––all night––men who have no prospect of relief to-morrow, whose only release is death, and the release they long and pray for seems never to come. And many of them are men who have done no wrong, unless it be wrong to offend a potentate, to have an opinion of your own, to have the courage to express it; to object to laws and customs which should have been scrapped a thousand years ago.
“Hanson there knows his weakness. He has asked and begged us, in his sober moments, to be sure to do this very thing to him as a personal kindness. To-morrow his heart will be flooding with gratitude to know that he has got through with it without doing anyone any harm.”
“Yes, daddie, yes! But won’t you go to see if he cannot be released to-night?” she pleaded.