Some, it is true, are so conversant with such scenes that they lose the fresh effect which this occurrence had upon me. It was a new thing to have crime at my very door. It was no ordinary event for me to mingle my breath with that of outlaw men; of my own shape, indeed, but of wild passions and strange excitements, who gambled with such desperate stakes. I dropped the paper, pushed myself back from the table, and bade the servant go for the landlord.
He soon appeared, and I requested that he would get me a sight of the prisoners. My curiosity was certainly not unusual, or unnatural, and I flattered myself that my appearance gave weight to the wish. He disappeared, but soon returned with a favorable answer. With some caution, adopted to satisfy my host, lest I should be observed by those who might wish to indulge a similar desire, and might lead him to regret his effort in my behalf, I approached the room in which they were confined, and at a signal agreed upon was admitted.
It was a small apartment. The men were standing at separate windows, looking out upon that open world from whose highways and endless fields they had been taken so suddenly. They were heavily manacled at wrist and ankle. Deep suffering is not sensitive, or easily startled, or perhaps their apathy in this instance arose from sullenness, but neither of them turned or moved as I entered. I nodded to an officer watching at the door, thanked him in low words for his courtesy in indulging my curiosity, and then leaned back against the wall by his side, and silently scrutinized the prisoners.
They stood, as I have mentioned, unmoved as statues. Though their faces were concealed from my view as they looked out, and their backs only were presented, I could see that in age and general appearance they were very different. They were both dressed with tolerable decency, except that their clothes were soiled and torn in the hurry of their flight, and the struggle of their capture. One of them was evidently very young, probably not more than twenty, and the long, neglected hair which fell upon his coat was light and soft. His feet were small, his hands white and delicate, his person slender and somewhat emaciated. They showed gentle training.
His companion was older, and his figure shorter and more sturdy. He had an awkward stoop, and his whole appearance was slouching and ungainly. A profusion of coarse black hair fell straight over his shoulders, without curl or gloss, and a thick beard seemed to cover his face. He bore marks of great strength in his short, thick neck and heavy limbs. This was all that I could see, and I waited patiently for a change in their positions.
“They’re both of ’em,” whispered the officer, “strangers in the neighborhood. I guess it’s a new trade with ’em, for they’re not very keen. They got nothing for their risk and then didn’t know how to take themselves off. They’re bad looking chaps though, and I wouldn’t wonder if they’d seen the inside of a jail before to-day.”
“One of them is very young,” said I, “and looks like a gentleman’s son. Do you see his hands and feet?”
“You wouldn’t think that of him,” said he, “if you were to see his face once. It’s the worst face that I ever saw in a young man. They’re both game, too, and fought like the devil before we got the irons on ’em. That black, Spanish-looking rascal is as strong as a wild beast. He came mighty near getting off.”
“Where did you catch them?” said I, “you seem to have been prompt.”
“We found ’em by accident, in the end,” said the officer. “And it was their own foolishness, too, that brought it about. We had given ’em up, and were coming home, when we came across this letter. The fellows had dropped it two or three hundred yards from the house where we nabbed ’m. They thought they were safe, and were just trying to get something to eat. We wouldn’t have touched ’em, it’s likely, seeing ’em in a decent house, but they started, like fools, and looked scared, and all that, and we knew what to do.”