"What shall it be, boys?" His eyes twinkled pleasurably.
Bully McCrary never made a greater mistake, though it came out all right in the end.
"Home, Sweet Home, if you please, sir," he begged.
The State's leading official rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Of course, he did not want to play that; there were those who would feel very much upset, if he did—why, it would be torture. But McCrary's gaze pleaded so hard; the melodramatic McCrary was ready to preach, pray, shout hallelujahs, sing, dance, or fight. The Governor put the fiddle into place and began, striving purposely to give a poor interpretation. But his fingers trembled in spite of him, rendering a delicate and soulful vibrata. The prisoners stared toward one another with wide, friendly eyes. Then, one by one, they began to stare toward the floor.
Only a few bars had been played when Charley Wolfe, who had tried manfully to be a credit to his name, who had so bravely hidden all signs of his affliction, crumpled to his knees and cried out in the musical hill dialect two unbidden words in one—"Goddle-mighty!"
Just that.
The Governor quickly passed his fiddle and bow into the hands of the warden, knelt beside Charley Wolfe, and swept back from the clammy brow the thick, dead-black hair. He lifted the lean face, saw a trace of red at each corner of the quivering, sensitive mouth, and knew. Charley Wolfe no longer had a secret.
"He's got the bugs, sure," very sympathetically said Bully McCrary, who also had seen. "He's got 'em, sure."
"Warden," the Governor asked, "how much is there left of this boy's sentence?"