The Man Behind the Bars

by Winifred Louise Taylor

On our return, some two hours later, I noticed that George was unusually serious and silent, and apparently didn't see any joke in the situation, as he had on a former occasion when I sent him for something in a closet where the family silver was in full view. He told me afterward that the time of our absence covered the longest two hours of his life, and the hardest to bear.

My home is on the edge of the town in the midst of twelve acres with many trees. "You had not more than gone," said George, "when I began to think 'what if some one should come to rob the house and I could not defend it. And they could never know that I had not betrayed their trust.'"

George spent his Sundays under our trees, sometimes on guard in the orchard, which rather amused him; and I generally gave him an hour of my time, suggesting lines of work by which he could honestly earn his living, and trying my best to raise his moral standards. But he reserved his right to plan the general course of his life, or, as he would have said, to follow his own line of business. He knew that his work with us was but for the time, and he would never commit himself as to his future. This was the way he stated his position:

"I have no health; I like a comfortable place to sleep and good things to eat; I like a good class of entertainments and good books, and to buy magazines and send them to my friends in prison, and I like to help a man when he is just out of prison. Now, you ask me to forego all this; to work hard just to earn the barest living—for I could never earn big wages; you ask me to deny myself everything I care for just for the sake of a moral idea, when nobody in the world but you cares whether I go to the devil or not, and I don't really believe in either God or devil. Now, how many churchgoing men do you know who would give up a money-making business and accept the barest poverty and loneliness just for the sake of a moral idea?" And I wondered how many, indeed.

However, for all his arguments in defence of his way of life, when the time came to leave us better desires had taken root. My mother's taking his honesty for granted had its effect, and seemed to commit him to an effort in the right direction. We had fitted him out with respectable clothing and he had earned money to last several weeks. My mother gave him a letter of recommendation as gardener and he left us to seek employment in the parks of a large city.

But his appearance was against him and he had no luck in the first city where he applied; the time of the year, too, was unfavorable; and before his money had quite melted away he invested the remainder in a peddler's outfit of needles and other domestic requisites. These he sold among the wives of farmers, and in that way managed to keep body and soul together for a time. Frequent letters kept me informed of his whereabouts, though little was said of his hardships.

One morning George appeared at our door seeming more dulled and depressed than I had ever seen him. He stayed for an hour or more but was not very communicative. It was evident, however, that he had found the paths of honesty quite as hard as the way of the transgressor. As he was leaving he said:

"You may not believe me, but I walked all night in order to have this visit with you. I was off the railroad and couldn't otherwise make connections with this place in time to keep an appointment with a friend this evening; and I wanted to see you."

He hurried away then without giving me time for the inevitable surmise that the "friend" whom he was to meet was an "old pal," and leaving me to question whether I had another friend on earth who would walk all night in order to see me.

Only once again did I see George; he was looking more prosperous then, and handed me a ten-dollar bill, saying: "At last I can return the money you lent me; I wanted to long ago but couldn't."