Jerry had read these words a hundred times before, about other prisoners, with a gentle smile of cynical incredulity; he read them now with blank amazement and horror at the callousness of a world which could hang an innocent man without appeal or inquiry.
Time ran on, and the eve of the execution arrived at last. Something must be done: and Jerry did it. That night he sat long in his room by himself, in the unwonted throes of literary composition. He was writing a letter—a letter of unusual length and surprising earnestness. It cost him dear, that epistle; with his dictionary by his side, he stopped many times to think, and bit his penholder to fibre. But he wrote none the less with fiery indignation, and in a fever of moral zeal that positively astonished himself. Then he copied it out clean on a separate sheet, and folded the letter when done, with a prayer in his heart. It was a prayer for mercy on a condemned criminal—by the public hangman.
"IT COST HIM DEAR, THAT EPISTLE."
After that he stuck a stamp on with trembling fingers, and posted it himself at the main office.
All that night long Jerry lay awake and thought about the execution. As a rule, executions troubled his rest very little. But then, he had never before had to hang an innocent man—at least he hoped not—though his faith in the law had received a severe shock, and he trembled to think now what judicial murders he might have helped in his time unconsciously to consummate.
Next morning early, at the appointed hour, Jerry Stokes presented himself at Kingston jail. The sheriff was there, and the chaplain, and the prisoner. Ogilvy looked at him hard with a shrinking look of horror. Jerry had seen that look, too, a hundred times before, and disregarded it utterly: it was only the natural objection of a condemned criminal to the constitutional officer appointed to operate on him. But this time it cut the man to the very quick. That an innocent fellow-creature should regard him like that was indeed unendurable, especially when he, the public hangman, was the only soul on earth who believed in his innocence!
The chaplain stood forward and read the usual prayers. The condemned man repeated them after him in a faltering voice. As he finished, the sheriff turned with a grave face to Jerry. "Do your duty," he said. And Jerry stared at him stolidly.
"Sheriff," he began at last, after a very long pause, bracing himself up for an effort, "I've done my duty all my life till this, and I'll do it now. There ain't going to be no execution at all here this morning!"
The sheriff gazed at him astonished.