he was sorry for what he had done
and that she would pray for him every night of her life. Mark Hartwell
had been hard and defiant enough, but the prison officials told that
he cried like a child over Grandma Sheldon's little letter.

"There's nobody all bad," says Grandma when she relates the story. "I
used to believe a murderer must be, but I know better now. I think of
that poor man often and often. He was so kind and gentle to me--he
must have been a good boy once. I write him a letter every Christmas
and I send him tracts and papers. He's my own little charity. But I've
never been on the cars since and I never will be again. You never can
tell what will happen to you or what sort of people you'll meet if you
trust yourself on a train."

The Romance of Jedediah

Jedediah was not a name that savoured of romance. His last name was
Crane, which is little better. And it would be no use to call this
story "Mattie Adams's Romance" because Mattie Adams is not a romantic
name either. But names have really nothing to do with romance. The
most exciting and tragic affair I ever knew was between a man named
Silas Putdammer and a woman named Kezia Cullen--which has nothing to
do with the present story.

Jedediah, to all outward seeming, did not appear to be any more
romantic than his name. He looked distinctly commonplace as he rode
comfortably along the winding country road that was dreaming in the
haze and sunshine of a midsummer afternoon. He was perched on the
seat of a bright red pedlar's wagon, above and behind a dusty,
ambling, red pony of that peculiar gait and appearance pertaining to
the ponies of country pedlars--a certain placid, unhasting leanness,
as of a nag that has encountered troubles of his own and has lived
them down by sheer patience and staying power. From the bright red
wagon proceeded a certain metallic rumbling and clinking as it bowled
along, and two or three nests of tin pans on its flat rope-encircled
top flashed back the light so dazzlingly that Jedediah seemed the
beaming sun of a little planetary system all his own. A new broom
sticking up aggressively at each of the four corners gave the wagon a
resemblance to a triumphal chariot.

Jedediah himself had not been in the tin-peddling business long enough
to acquire the apologetic, out-at-elbows appearance which
distinguishes a tin pedlar from other kinds of pedlars. In fact, this
was his maiden venture in this line; hence he still look