So far as he knew he had never seen his father but once. First there had been a hot, dusty journey by stage, then he had gone through a massive iron gate and down a narrow passage, where he had trotted by his mother's side, holding fast to her hand.
All this came back in a jerky, disconnected fashion, with wide gaps and lapses he could not fill, but the impression made upon his mind by his father had been lasting and vivid. He still saw him as he was then, with the chalky prison pallor on his haggard face. A clumsily made man of tremendous bone and muscle, who had spoken with them through the bars of his cell-door, while his mother cried softly behind her shawl. The boy had thought of him as a man in a cage.
He wondered who Ezra Hart was, for the name seemed familiar. At length he placed him. He was the lawyer who had defended his father. He was puzzled that Hart knew where he was; he had hoped the little New England village had lost all track of him, but the fact that Hart did know convinced him it would be quite useless to try to keep his whereabouts a secret from his father, even if he wished to. Since Hart knew, there must be others, also, who knew.
He took up the newspaper clippings again. By an odd coincidence they had reached him on the very day the Governor of Massachusetts had set apart for his father's release.
Outside, in the yards, on the drenched town, and in the sweating fields beyond, the warm spring rain fell and splashed.
It was a fit time for Roger Oakley to leave the gray walls, and the gray garb he had worn so long, and to re-enter the world of living things and the life of the one person in all that world who had reason to remember him.
CHAPTER II
OAKLEY drew down the top of his desk and left the office. Before locking the door, on which some predecessor had caused the words, “Department of Transportation and Maintenance. No admittance, except on business,” to be stencilled in black letters, he called to McClintock, who, with Dutch Pete, was still fussing over the wheezy switch-engine.