Understanding something of the world in which he lived, I suggested the study of a new language as a mental occupation requiring concentration on a line entirely disconnected from his past. He gladly adopted my suggestion and began the study of German; but it was all in vain—he could not escape from himself.
He had managed to keep so brave a front in his letters that I was unaware that the man was completely breaking down until the spring morning when we had our last interview.
There was in his face the unmistakable look of the man who is doomed—so many of my prisoners died. His remorse was like a living thing that had eaten into his life—a very wolf within his breast. He was no longer impassive, but fairly writhing in mental agony. He did not seem to know that he was dying; he certainly did not care. His one thought was for Brett and the far-reaching, irreparable wrong that Brett had suffered through him. When I said that I thought the fate of the innocent man in prison was not so dreadful as that of the guilty man Shannon exclaimed: "You are mistaken. I don't see how it is possible for a man unjustly imprisoned to believe in any justice, human or divine, or in any God above," and he continued with an impassioned appeal on behalf of innocent prisoners which left a deep impression with me. In his own being he seemed to be actually experiencing at once the fate of the innocent victim of injustice and of the guilty man suffering just punishment. He spoke of his intense spiritual loneliness, which human sympathy was powerless to reach, and of how thankful he should be if he could find light or hope in any religion; but he could not believe in any God of truth or justice while Brett was left in prison. A soul more completely desolate it is impossible to imagine.
My next letter from Shannon was written from the hospital, and expresses the expectation of being "all right again in a few days"; farther on in the letter come these words:
"I do believe in a future life. Without this hope and its consoling influence life would scarcely be worth living. I believe that all the men who have ever died, Atheists or whatever they professed to be, did so with the hope more or less sustaining them, of awakening to a future life. This hope is implanted by nature universally in the human breast and it is not unlikely to suppose that it has some meaning."
A few weeks later I received a line from the warden telling me of the death of Ellis Shannon, and from the prison hospital was sent me a little volume of translations from Socrates which had been Shannon's companion in his last days. A slip of paper between the leaves marked Socrates's reflections on death and immortality. The report of one of the hospital nurses to me was:
"Shannon had consumption, but he died of grief." It is not often that one dies of a broken heart outside the pages of fiction and romance, but medical authority assures us that it sometimes happens.
Up to this time I had never seen George Brett, but after the death of Shannon we had one long interview. What first struck me was the remarkable similarity between the voices of Brett and Shannon, as supposed identification of the voice of Brett with that of the burglar had been accepted as evidence at the trial. My general impression of the man was wholly favorable. He was depressed and discouraged, but responsive, frank, and unstudied in all that he said. When he mentioned the man shot in the burglary I watched him closely; his whole manner brightened as he said: