years as a tamer of man-beasts in a great stone cage had overlaid
his sympathies with a thickening callus.

"One of our lifers that we won't have with us much longer," he said
casually, noting that the governor's eyes followed the sick convict.
"When the con gets one of these hill billies he goes mighty fast."

"A mountaineer, then?" said the governor. "What's his name?"

"Dugmore," answered the warden; "sent from Clayton County. One of those
Clayton County feud fighters."

The governor nodded understandingly. "What sort of a record has he made
here?"

"Oh, fair enough!" said the warden. "Those man-killers from the
mountains generally make good prisoners. Funny thing about this fellow,
though. All the time he's been here he never, so far as I know, had a
message or a visitor or a line of writing from the outside. Nor wrote a
letter out himself. Nor made friends with anybody, convict or guard."

"Has he applied for a pardon?" asked the governor.

"Lord, no!" said the warden. "When he was well he just took what was
coming to him, the same as he's taking it now. I can look up his record,
though, if you'd care to see it, sir."

"I believe I should," said the governor quietly.

A spectacled young wife-murderer, who worked in the prison office on
the prison books, got down a book and looked through it until he came to
a certain entry on a certain page. The warden was right--so far as the
black marks of the prison discipline went, the friendless convict's
record showed fair.

"I think," said the young governor to the warden and his secretary when
they had moved out of hearing of the convict bookkeeper--"I think I'll
give that poor devil a pardon for a Christmas gift. It's no more than a
mercy to let him die at home, if he has any home to go to."

"I could have him brought in and let you tell him yourself, sir,"
volunteered the warden.

"No, no," said the governor quickly. "I don't want to hear that cough
again. Nor look on such a wreck," he added.

Two days before Christmas the warden sent to the hospital ward for No.
874. No. 874, that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in and kept
himself upright by holding with one hand to the door jamb. The warden
sat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands a
folded-up, blue-backed document.

"Dugmore," he said in his best official manner, "when His Excellency,
Governor Woodford, was here on Sunday he took notice that your general
health was not good