ing advantage of a time when the guard was a few
hundred feet away, the other convicts knocked Johnson down and tried to
get away. He got up, however, and interested them till the guard got to
him and the escape was prevented. Johnson waited till all was secure
again, and then fainted from loss of blood occasioned by a scalp wound
over which he had a long fight afterward with erysipelas.

This was all lucky for me, and when I presented the petition to the
Governor I had a strong case, made more so by the heroic action of a man
who had been unjustly condemned.

There is but little more to tell. The Governor intimated that he would
take favorable action upon the petition, but he wanted time. My great
anxiety, as I told him, was to get the pardon in time so that Johnson
could spend his Christmas in freedom. I had seen him frequently, and he
was pale and thin to emaciation. He could not live long if he remained
where he was. I spoke earnestly of his good character since his
incarceration, and the Governor promised prompt action. But he was
called away in December and I feared that he might, in the rush and
pressure of other business, forget the case of Johnson till after the
holidays. So I telegraphed him and made his life a burden to him till
the afternoon of the 24th, when the 4:50 train brought the pardon. In my
poor, weak way I have been in the habit for some years of making
Christmas presents, but nothing that could be bought with money ever
made me a happier donor or donee than the simple act of giving to
William Johnson four years of freedom which he did not look for.

I went away to spend my own Christmas, but not till I had given Johnson
a few dollars to help him get another start, and had made him promise to
write me how he got along. And so that to me was a memorable and a
joyous Christmas, for I had made myself happy by making others happy.

BILL NYE.

P. S.--Perhaps I ought not to close this account so abruptly as I have
done, for the reader will naturally ask whether Johnson ever wrote me,
as he said he would. I only received one letter from him, and that I
found when I got back, a few days after Christmas. It was quite
characteristic, and read as follows:

"Laramy the twenty-fitt dec.

FRENT NIE.

"When you get this Letter i will Be in A nuther tearritory whare the
weekid seize from trubbling & the weery air at Reast excoose my Poor
writing i refer above to the tearritory of Utaw where