Through the Shadows with O'Henry

CHAPTER XX. The Prison Demon; the beast exhibited; magic of kindness; reclamation;tragedy of Ira Maralatt; meeting of father and daughter.

Such is the story of Jimmy Valentine as it unfolded itself in the Ohio penitentiary. O. Henry takes the one great episode in that futile life and with it he wins the tears and the grateful smiles of the nation. In that throbbing silence, when the ex-con opens the safe and the little sister of the girl he loves is saved from suffocation, Jimmy as he might have been, not Jimmy as he was, is before us. Few who have breathed hard in that gripping moment would have denied Dick Price his chance, would have refused him the pardon he earned, would have doomed him to his forlorn and lonely death in the prison hospital.

Bill Porter was not the grim artist to paint that harsh picture for the world. He loved a happy ending. He could not even give the exact details of the safe- opening. It was too cruel for his light and winsome fancy.

That was ever Bill's way. He took the facts, but he twisted them as he would. I asked him about it later. In the story he gives the hero a costly set of tools wherewith to open the vault. He does not have him file his nails.

"Colonel, it chills my teeth to think of that gritting operation," he said. "I prefer the set of tools. I don't like to make my victims suffer. And then, you see, the tools enable Jimmy to make a present to a friend. That gift illustrates the toleration of the man who has been in prison.

"Jimmy decided to quit the game himself, but he does not expect the whole world to share his fervor of reform. Instead of burying the instruments of his former profession, as your reformed citizen would have done, he straightway sends them to a former pal. I like that spirit in my character.

"The ordinary man who makes a New Year's resolution immediately sends down censure on the fellow who isn't perched on the wagon with him. Jimmy does no such thing. That's one of the advantages of spending a few vacations in prison. You grow mellow in your judgments."

This soft, golden toleration was one of the gracious traits in Porter's character. It won him friends even though his aloof dignity forbade familiarity. In the "pen" he was universally respected. The meanest cutthroat in the ranges felt honored to serve him.

Porter's "drag" with the prison barber was the subject of raillery at the club. The barber was an artist in his trade. He seemed to take a mean delight in turning out grotesque, futuristic patterns in headdress. But for Porter the most exquisite precision was observed. His thin, yellow hair was trimmed to a nicety. The kind, easy manner of the man had completely captivated, the burly-hearted convict barber.

If it had not been for this humorous, penetrative understanding in Porter, the Recluse Club would not have endured a month. He was its equilibrium. Many a violent clash ended in a laugh because of an odd fling Bill Porter would interject into the turmoil.

Men who have been walled off from free contact with their fellows become excessively quarrelsome and "touchy." We were cooped together like children in an over-large family. We had no escape from each other's society.

The isolation of prison life whets antagonism. Men who could travel to the ends of the earth in friendship would, in a sudden raging bitterness, spring like tigers at each other's throat. Even in the happiness of our Sunday dinners these explosive outbursts would break out among the members.

It would start with the merest trifle, and all at once there would be fiercely angry taunts flung from one to the other. In one of these uncalled for eruptions I sent in my resignation to the club.

Billy Raidler had protested that he could taste the soapsuds on the dishes. I was the chief dishwasher. I did not like the imputation. I would not have minded Billy's protest, but old man Carnot backed him up with further criticism.

"Most assuredly we can taste the soap," he said. "But worse than that, I do not like the garlic. Now, Mr. Jennings, why can you not pick the odious vegetable out of the roast?"

Carnot was an irascible old epicure. He wanted his napkin folded oblong and his knife and fork laid down in a certain fashion. He never failed to resent the introduction of the garlic Louisa loved.

Every one at the table took up the issue. They could all taste the soapsuds, they said. "Damn* pigs, all of you! Take the honor at the dishpan yourselves." I was furious with resentment. I could have hurled the pots and skillets at them. The next Sunday I did not go to the club. I told Billy I was finished with them. Billy had no patience with the sulks and left me in a huff.

Porter came over to the post-office and knocked at the door. "Colonel," he said, and there was such understanding indulgence in his tone I felt immediately appeased, "don't you think you better reconsider?"

"You're the very salt of the earth. The club is absolutely flat without your presence. You see, we only agreed with Billy to sustain him. He's a cripple. He can't stand alone."

It was just the sort of pampering to mollify unreasonable hot temper. Porter was always ready to smooth us down. He was always ready to hear our grievances. His own troubles he bore alone.

Whenever he did reveal his thoughts it was by an accidental outcropping in a lightsome talk. He and Louisa used to indulge in long discussions on astronomy and evolution. Porter was facetious, Louisa serious and very scientific. Louisa would be mixing up a gravy or a sauce.

"You're something of a little creator in the culinary line, Louisa," Porter would say. "What do you suppose were the ingredients used in the creation of the world?"

Louisa's attention was instant. He would talk about protoplasm and the gradual accommodation of living organism to environment.

"Tut, tut," Porter would mock. "I hold fast to the Biblical story. What else should men be made of but a handful of mud? The Creator was right; men are but dirt. Take Ira Maralatt, the Prison Demon, for instance."

A queer, yellowish pallor spread over Bill's face. I knew that the name had slipped from Porter's lips unconsciously.

"Colonel, it is a ghastly thing to see a man degraded into a beast like Maralatt," he said. "Last night they beat him to strips again. I had to go down to the basement to sponge him off. I tell you it would take a floor mop to do the job right he is such a giant."

It was the first time I had ever heard Porter speak of Maralatt, the Prison Demon, yet he had perhaps to sponge him off two or three times a week. Maralatt was the untamed tiger of the "stir." He was the prison horror. He had attacked and stabbed a dozen guards.

For fourteen years he had been in solitary, practically buried alive in the black hole in the basement without a bed, without blankets, without light.

When the guards would attempt to clean out the cell Ira would spring at them. They would overpower him, beat him and hang him up by the wrists. Still he was unsubdued. He kept the prison in recurring spasms of fright.

No one knew who would be his next victim. He was as ferocious as a mad bull.

I had never seen him. Porter's exclamation filled me with curiosity. I went over the next evening to ask him about Maralatt. We were standing in one of the wards just above the punishment cell.

A sudden wild, terrific scream, tortured and agonized, split the air. There was a frenzied scuffle, a booming thud, and a guard's voice shrilled out in frantic terror.

Porter's tranquil face quivered. "Maralatt," he whispered. "Murder at last!"

The next morning excitement shot like a flash from face to face. A big secret was out. Maralatt had nearly strangled a guard the night before. He was to be moved from his dungeon in solitary to a steel cage built in solid stone at the end of the east corridor.

For months they had been building the cage. It was a revolting thing, made as if to house some ferocious jungle beast. It opened into a niche in the stone about four by eight feet. In the niche Ira was to sleep.

We got the tip from the warden's office. I had been sent on a message across the campus. I came into the alley-like corridor, passing a few guards. A look of riven terror held them staring and silent. Their frightened eyes were fastened on the door that led to the solitary cells.

The door sprang open, and a spectacle to freeze the heart with its terrific and grisly horror was before us. I saw the Prison Demon. Hulk-shouldered, gigantic, lurched forward, he towered above the dozen guards like a huge, ferocious gorilla-man.

I could see his face. The hair was matted about him, the clothes torn in ragged strips.

The guards stood at a distance, pushing him forward with long poles. They stood on either side. The demon could not escape. At the ends of the poles were strong iron hooks, fastened into his flesh, and as the guards pushed the hooks jagged into the prisoner's bones. He was compelled to walk.

On his foot was the monstrous Oregon boot. Every step must have been an agony. There was no sound from the Prison Demon. Across the grass to the new-made dungeon in the old A and B block the hellish procession took its way. Ira Maralatt was riveted to his steel cage and a sign, "Prison Demon," pasted above the grating.

The Prison Demon became an attraction at the penitentiary. His fame spread over the city—almost over the State. He was known as the brute man—the hell fiend. Visitors wanted a sight of him. The old warden saw a chance to turn a penny.

For 25 cents citizens were taken down the east corridor and allowed to stare at the degraded thing that had once been a man.

Ira was not a willing party to the bargain. He had a mean habit of crouching down in the far corner of his black cage and cheating the visitors of their money's worth. One day a distinguished citizen stood in the alley half an hour waiting for the demon to exhibit himself. Threats and prods from the guards were fruitless. The matter was reported to the warden. Incensed and blustering, he came running down the corridor.

"Open the door," he called to one of the guards. No one moved. They did not dare obey the order.

"Open the door," Coffin yelled, snatching the club from one of the guards. He sprang into the cage, the club raised, rushing furiously toward the crouching giant in the corner.

"Come out, you fiend!" he bawled. The Demon reared, hurled himself upright and lunged with the violence of a raging Colossus against the warden. The sudden mad impact bowled the warden over.

Ira snatched the club and flung it forth for a crashing blow on Coffin's head. Two guards dashed into the cage, caught Ira by the feet and sent him thundering backward against the wall.

The visitor got his 25 cents' worth that day.

The warden's escape was little short of a miracle. It taught him a lesson. He devised a safer scheme for bringing Maralatt out of his wretched hole. From a window in the inner hall he had a hose attached to the cage. It would send down a storming current of ice-cold water that would cut the flesh of the cowering Demon.

Ira would come roaring like an infuriated lion to the bars of the cage. He would grab the steel in his mighty hands, shaking it, and filling the alley with wild, maniac screams.

This practice continued two or three months. The new warden came in, took down the sign from Ira's cage and prevented the shameful exhibits.

The sequel to Ira's tragic history came many months later, after I had been appointed private secretary to Warden W. N. Darby. Darby had a kind, magnificent sympathy in his enthusiastic nature. He had an eager ear for suggestions, even from the meanest convict. A chance incident opened the dark book of Ira Maralatt's ghastly life.

One evening I was walking down the east corridor on my way to the asylum. I had taken an apple from the warden's table where I ate. I was bringing the fruit to a poor fellow in the prison "bughouse." He had lost his mind and his eyesight in the hoe polishing shop. The hoes were polished on emery wheels.

Millions of steel particles darted about, often puncturing the convicts in the face and neck. The sparks had gotten this poor devil in the forehead and eyes. I used to bring him an extra bit to eat.

As a I passed the prison demon's cage I caught a glimpse of a haggard face at the low opening into the stone cell. Like a dumb, pathetic apparition, wretched and uncertain, the lumbering figure groped from corner to corner. The red, sunken eyes seemed to be burning deep into the smeared and pallid cheeks.

One hand that was but a mammoth yellow claw was pressed against the rough mat of black hair. More like a hurt and broken Samson than like a hell fiend Ira Maralatt looked as his eye met mine in startled fear.

Something in the defenseless misery of his glance held me. I ran back to his cage, took the apple from my pocket, pressed it through the bars, rolling it over to Maralatt. He drew back. I called softly to him.

"There's an apple for you, Ira." He made no answer. I stepped into a shadow in the corridor and waited.

In a moment I saw the huge creature creeping stealthily forward on his hands and knees. The great yellow claw reached out. The broken cuff and link on his arm clanked on the cement. The chain was imbedded into his wrist and the flesh bulged out over it. The hand closed over the apple. The Demon leaped back to his corner.

After that I felt myself drawn to the Prison Demon's cage. Ira no longer seemed a fiend to me, but an abused and tormented human. I sat outside his cell and called to him. He must have recognized my voice, for he came creeping with a hunching ing swiftness to the front of the cage. He always went on all fours.

"Did you like the apple, Ira?" He looked up at me, as though a thought were struggling in his mind. He did not answer, but sat there watching me. Then he shook his shaggy head and crept back to the stone niche.

I thought I would ask Bill Porter about him. Whenever Ira had been beaten Bill, as the hospital attendant, had been called in to revive him. The theme nauseated Porter. The memory of the raw and bleeding flesh he had so many times sponged sent a shudder of revulsion through him.

"Don't speak of it. This place becomes more unendurable each moment. I try to write in the night. Some wretch, racked with unbearable pain, screams out. It goes like a cold blade to the throat. It comes into my story like a death rattle in the midst of a wedding. Then I can work no longer."

"But you saw Ira and watched him more than others. Is he a demon?"

"Colonel, the man should be in an insane asylum, not in a prison. There's something pressing on his brain. That's my opinion."

I felt satisfied with the verdict. Every night I used to go down to Ira's cage, bringing him pieces of biscuit or meat from the warden's table. In a little while I knew that Ira counted on these visits. I would find him waiting for me.

This wild man, who had become a thing of terror with his hand against his fellows, would be sitting close to the bars, his glowing, uncomprehending eyes peering with a glance of cringing supplication for my coming.

He would take the biscuits from my hands and eat them before me. For fourteen years no one had ever seen the Prison Demon eat. His food would be shoved through the grating. He would not touch it. In the night he would drag it into his cell.

We would talk about the prison. Ira could answer intelligently. Then I would try to draw his history from him. I could hardly ever get more than three or four words. He couldn't remember. He would point to his head and press his hand against it.

We knew that Ira was in for murder, that he had choked a man to death. No one knew the circumstances leading to the crime. No one had ever cared. I thought I would send a letter to some friends if he had any. They might help him.

"Don't know. Head hurts," he would answer in a guttural indistinct voice. "Got a lick on the head once. Coal car hit me.

Night and night, after the most laborious pauses, he would give me the same answers. He wanted to remember. When he failed he would press his powerful hands together and turn to me in abject, appealing despair. But once he seemed to have a gleam of recollection.

I became absorbed in piecing together the solitary words he muttered. I must have been sitting there half an hour. A runner from the warden came shouting down the main corridor for me.

"Where in hell have you been serenading?" Darby thundered. On a quick impulse I told him of the demon and the apple.

"Ira's only a poor demented creature. He got a lick on the head once. He's harmless as an infant if you handle him right."

Darby looked at me as though I were mad.

"It's a fact. He eats out of my hand."

"If that's true then I'll take him out of there."

We went down the next morning to the cage. The warden ordered the door opened. I could see the dark outlines of Ira's figure. The guard was frightened. Darby took the key, turned the lock and stepped forward. If he had suddenly flung himself under a moving engine, death would not have seemed more certain. Ira drew back, hesitated, then leaped with all his mighty bulk toward Darby.

"Ira!" I shouted. The massive figure stiffened as though an electric voltage had suddenly gone through him. The Prison Demon dropped his arm to the ground and came creeping toward me.

"Be good, Ira," I whispered.

The warden braced himself. We went into the tiny cell room. The stench and filth of the hole came up like a sickening wave against us. "Come outside, Ira," the warden said. I nodded. "If I give you a good job, Ira, will you behave?"

It was the first time Ira had heard a kind word from a prison official. He looked about, his eyes narrowing distrustfully, and began to edge away from the warden.

"He'll treat you square, Ira."

The towering giant could have crushed me in his two hands. He was about a foot taller than I, but he shuffled along at my side, looking down at me with a meek docility that filled the guards with wonder.

The warden made straight for the hospital, ordered good food and skilled attention for the Demon. Three weeks later the Ohio penitentiary had a soft- tongued Hercules in the place of the insensate beast that had been Ira Maralatt. The doctors had found the skull pressing on the brain, operated and removed the "dent" that had sent Ira into his mad fits of murderous, unreasoning rage. Memory returned to him. Ira told a story, moving and compelling in its elemental tragedy.

He had been an iron puddler in the steel mills of Cleveland. Before a furnace, vast and roaring as a hell pit, the half -nude puddler works, stirring the molten iron. He breathes in a red hot, blasting hurricane. He moves in a bellowing clamor louder than the shout of a thousand engines. Only the strongest can withstand the deafening tumult, the scorching air of that bedlam. Ira Maralatt was one of these.

There came a strike in the mills. Ira went home to his wife. He had been married but a year. They had been paying down on a little home. Ira could get no work. The walkout dashed their hopes.

"I'm going to Canaltown, to the mines," he told the girl- wife one day. "I'll be back as soon as it's settled." She walked with him to the gate. He never saw her again. When Ira returned to the little home all that had been dear and sacred to him was gone.

In West Virginia Maralatt got a job in the coal mines. He was working near one of the pillars. A coal car shot along the tracks to the chutes to be filled. The car with its tonnage started down the grade.

Just at the pillar it should have switched. Instead, it came heading straight toward Ira. Further down the track twenty men were working. The car, with the tremendous speed of the runaway, would have crushed them to a pulp.

There was one chance of escape for them. Ira took it. The gigantic hands went out, caught the bolting car and with a smashing force sent the top-heavy four-wheeler sideways.

In the terrible impact Ira caromed against the wall of the mine. The lives of twenty men were saved. The mashed and unconscious form of the gigantic Maralatt was dragged out and sent to the hospital.

Without a thought of himself and his own life, Ira Maralatt had hurled himself across the path of the runaway coal car. If he had died his fellows would have exalted the memory of the man whose splendid courage had saved twenty lives. Ira lived but the sacrifice took a dearer thing than mere existence. It gave him not honor, but a shameful brand. He became the Prison Demon.

After the tragic disaster in the coal mine, Ira lay for months in the hospital. He was finally sent out as cured.

The strike at the steel mills had been settled. Back to Cleveland and the little home the iron puddler went.

There was a pathway, hedged with cowslips, leading up to the door. Ira walked quickly, meaning to surprise the wife who had not heard from him in the months he had been at the hospital.

There were new curtains at the window. A hand rustled muslin drapery aside. A strange face looked with doubtful question on the man at the hedge.

"Good morning, sir," the woman said.

"Good morning, indeed," Maralatt answered, mystified and startled.

"Who lives here?"

"What's that to you?" the woman snapped.

"This is my home and my wife's!" Suddenly excited and trembling, Ira turned upon the strange woman.

"Where is my wife?" Where is Dora Maralatt?"

"Oh, her! She's gone. I don't know where. Got put out. Are you the missing husband?" the woman sneered. "Well, there's your bag and baggage over in the lot there!" With a laughing shrug, she pushed the curtain to its place.

Over in the lot, dumped out like a rubbish heap, Maralatt found the remnants of his home. There was the chest with the wrought-steel corners he had given Dora for a birthday gift—there was the dining-room table and the six chairs that had been the pride of the girl's heart. There, too, was a thing Ira had never seen before—a clothes basket tied with pink stuff and ribbons.

Distracted, enraged, like one suddenly demented, he ran back to the cottage door and banged on the panel.

"Go away from here with your noise," the woman called. "I'll have you arrested!"

"Open the door," Maralatt stormed, "please, I'll not come in. Open it just a moment. My wife, did you see her go? Is she alive? Tell me just that. How long is she gone? Where can she be?"

The woman softened. "Don't get so excited and I'll tell you. She went out alive. But she was pretty well done in. She looked about gone. I don't know where she went. Maybe she's dead now."

"The baby—did it die, too?"

"I don't know about that. She left before it was born. "Well, now, I'm sorry for you, poor fellow, but I don't know where she is. I'll tell you—you might go down to the landlord. He knows. He's the one that ordered those things dumped out. He's down at the same old office."

Before the words were out of her mouth Maralatt bolted down the path, tearing like a wild man through the streets. "Where's my wife?" Where's Dora Maralatt? Where's the girl you put out of the bungalow on the hill?"

In a rushing fury the questions tumbled from his lips. The agent looked at him with contemptuous insult. "Who let this maniac into the office? Throw him out?"

The order calmed Maralatt. He leaned forward, touching the man's hand. "Excuse me, I'm a bit excited. I've been away. You know me, don't you? I was buying that little cottage on C street. I've been sick. I came back. I can't find my wife.

Could you tell me where she is? They say you put her out."

"Oh, you're the missing puddler! Well, you've lost the house. Yes, the woman was put out. I remember it all now. She made a fuss about it. We had to throw her out."

"Where is she?" Maralatt was breathing quick and short in a choking panic. "Where's my wife gone?"

"Oh, get out of here! The house is lost. What do I care about your wife. Why didn't you stick around and look after her?"

"Well, you put her out, didn't you? Where did she go to?"

"The damn' scrub's in hell, where she ought to be! Who cares about your------ of a wife anyway! Get out of here!"

The balance slipped. A blood-crazed panther, Maralatt, leaped over the counter, "My what of a wife! What—what—what—you damned scoundrel! My wife— what? Say it again! You thief, you villain, say it again!"

Iron hands swooped the agent from the floor, wrenching the neck as though it were but a chicken's. Back and forth until the skin on the scarlet cheeks was like to burst, Maralatt knocked that grasping head. It took three officers to break those hands loose from the dead man's throat.

A foaming maniac, Maralatt was knocked insensible, thrown into the patrol wagon, and taken off to the station house.

His mind was gone. He was sent up for life to the Ohio penitentiary. No defense had been made for him.

This was the story Ira told the warden after the operation at the prison hospital had restored his memory. The giant Hercules was no longer a gorilla man. Clean, quiet, spent, he sat like a kind old patriarch and told the aching tale.

Darby made him caretaker in the condemned row. Ira cleaned out the cells, swept the room where the electric chair was kept and took the food to these convicts. Doomed men, counting the days between them and the chair, played checkers with the prison demon now. In the ghastly fear of the nightmare days before execution many a lost unfortunate found comfort in the benediction of Maralatt's sympathetic presence.

I used to visit Ira in the condemned row. He was happy and serene. Some one had given him a pair of canary birds. The warden allowed him to raise them in his cell. First he had four, then ten, before long the dull, clamorous silence of the doomed men was filled with the joyous, thrilling song of many canary birds.

It was a touching thing to see the white-haired giant sitting in his cell—the sunlight coming in in golden radiance through the window in the inner wall, and these yellow fluttering, singing things perched on his shoulders and resting in the palms of his great hands.

Dark faces pressed against the bars of the condemned cells. "Ira, bring me a bird, let me hold it a moment!" one would call. "Ira, have Melba sing the "Toreador," another would grimly jest. In the near approach of their death, Ira and his birds and his gentle ministrations were like a prophecy of living hope.

One day Warden Darby hurried into the office. He had been up to Cleveland. His voice was brusque. "I have discovered something," he said. "Send for Ira Maralatt, at once."

"Sit down, Ira, and be calm." The warden could scarcely suppress the emotion of his own voice. "I've been up to Cleveland. Ran into the strangest thing. Guess you told a straight story, all right!"

"Yes, sir," Ira answered, a frightened light in his eye. "Yes, sir it was the truth. Leastways, I'm pretty sure it was. Surely, I couldn't have dreamed it, could I?"

"Now, that's all right. But listen to me. You had a wife, you say? Dora, that was her name, wasn't it? Well, she died—died right after they put her but of the cottage. The baby lived. She's alive today. I met her. She's pretty. She was adopted by wealthy people here in Columbus. They're friends of the governor. I just happened to talk about you. The girl's foster mother is a relative of your wife's. She thought you were a maniac. I told her the truth.

"Ira, go over to the State shop, get a suit and shoes. You're pardoned. I took it up with the Governor. You go out tomorrow.

With a shock of bewildered emotion that sent a quiver of sobbing happiness into his voice, Ira Maralatt put out his hands to the warden.

"Does the girl know?"

"Now, no, they haven't told her. It would be too sudden a strain."

The next morning Ira, in his cheap suit, the squeaky prison shoes and a light straw hat, came to the warden's office. His gigantic frame was stooped and his face shot through with nervous excitement.

"You did all this, Mr. Al," he said, the tears crowding into his eyes. "Just think what you did when you rolled that apple to me." He hesitated a moment.

"Mr. Al, she won't ever recognize me, will she? I don't think I'd like her to know her father was the Prison Demon."

When Darby handed him the pardon and the five dollars his hands shook. "I don't know how to thank you, warden!"

"You don't have to—God knows you've paid for itl"

Ira took two of his little canaries with him. "I'll give them to the girl for a present. I want to see her. I have to see her." He shook hands with Darby and me.

A week passed. We heard no word from him. The warden became alarmed. "I wonder if anything could have happened to the old man?" Maralatt was but 46. His terrible suffering during 18 years in prison had broken even his magnificent strength. He seemed about 60. "I wonder if he went to see his daughter? Funny, I didn't hear."

It worried Darby so much he inquired. He sent for the girl's foster mother. He told her of Ira and the canaries. Back came the frantic answer from the daughter herself. In an hour she was at the warden's office.

"An old man with canaries?" Yes, an old man had come with them. She had the birds now. "What about it? That man, my father!"

"Why didn't some one tell me? How dare they keep it from me. That's what he meant when he left. That's why he called me little Dora. Oh, what shall we do now?"

In broken sentences she told of the mysterious visit of the old bird-peddler. Ira had gone up the steps of the palatial home where the girl lived. He had brought the little cage with the birds. Perhaps he had intended to tell Mary he was her father. The sight of her beauty, her culture, her happiness had chilled his ardor. The grand old fellow could not bear to spoil her glad youth with the tragedy of his bleak life. He had left with his claim unspoken.

The girl was coming down the stairs as the old man rang the bell. The butler had denied him entrance. And the girl had run forward and ordered the old man to come in.

"I thought, Miss, perhaps you would buy these birds. I'm poor and they are wonderful singers. I raised them myself."

And just out of sympathy for the pathetic old stranger, the girl had bought the canaries. He would only take a dollar from her. She had not understood. He had looked at her and the tears had streamed down his cheeks.

"Good-by, little Dora," he said as he left. He stood at the door as though he were about to say something further and then he looked at her with a queer, sad light on his face and went down the steps.

They thought he was a harmless, unbalanced old oddity.

"Where can I find him? Where shall I look for him? Why didn't some one tell me?" the girl was torn with grief. "Hurry, let us look now."

Outside it was snowing. There had been a wind storm for a week. Maralatt's daughter and the warden searched in every street and alley for the old man.

He was nowhere to be found.

One night there was a knock at the guard-room door and a faint voice called out, "Let me come in, please." The captain of the guard opened the door. Ira Maralatt, his thin prison suit drenched and hanging in a limp rag about him, was kneeling in the snow at the prison door.

"Let me in, please, I have nowhere to go."

"No, no, go away, you're pardoned. I can't let you in, it's against the law," the captain answered.

The warden was informed.

"Who was it?" he asked.

"Maralatt," they answered.

He came rushing to the gate and ordered it opened. Maralatt was not there.

Darby swore at them.

"Don't you know we've been looking everywhere for him for weeks?"

Beyond the walls, flinging himself along, the warden went on the search. He came back fifteen minutes later, the half -frozen Maralatt limping along at his side. He found him down in the snow near the river. Ira was burning up with fever. His face was already stricken with death.

Everywhere he went asking for work, he said, they had refused him. They said he was too old. Finally he gave up trying.

The warden sent for Maralatt's daughter.

The young girl, graceful and white as an angel, flung herself into the old man's arms.

"Don't die, daddy! Why didn't you tell me? See, I'm your girl, Mary. Just look at me! Oh, why didn't I know? If you only knew how many times I longed for a father—any one, any kind. Why didn't you tell me?"

Maralatt looked at her in dim, feverish gladness. He took the delicate hands in his gigantic palm and turned to her.

"I looked all over for you, Mary," he said. "I'm so glad you came."

With a smile of wondrous peace on his lips, the prison demon sank back on the pillows. The old hero had won his palm at last.