THE DESPERADO

      I bear a charmed life.

— Shakespeare.     
 

      The more we see of events, the less we come to believe in any fate or destiny except character.

— Phillips Brooks.     
 

      Here's the smell of blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

— Shakespeare.     
 

      Every one is the son of his own works.

— Cervantes.     
 

      We find in life exactly what we put into it.

— Emerson.     

 

THE DESPERADO

      THE court-room was crowded. The trial for murder, which had lasted several days, was now closing. The prisoner watched the proceedings of the case with apparent interest, and laughed at times when his counsel engaged in repartee or witticism.

      He was young — so young to be on trial for his life. As I saw him for the first time, with his deep-set eyes fixed for the most part on the man who would ultimately pronounce his doom or deliverance, and his arms resting on the edge of the dock, he seemed to be in his teens; such a youth, indeed, as one would expect to find on the farm, dreaming the dreams of youth, and with never a care or sorrow. He was of medium height, and carried his head well, although his shoulders were rounded and drooped somewhat. His eyes were grey and keen, but without expression; his features were small and regular; his hair was dark and unkempt; he was dressed in shabby black.

      For the first time since his arraignment, he showed signs of nervousness as the judge began to address the jury. He bit his lower lip and a quiver of fear passed over him. His face, hitherto pale and rigid, coloured deeply, and his head dropped on his chest. As the last words in a chain of damaging evidence were spoken, the colour passed away, and a pallor, deadlier than before, revealed the tumult of his soul within.

      The prisoner threw his head backward and rolled his eyes from right to left. It was a terrible moment. He seemed to be struggling with rising hysteria. Every muscle was drawn into tension. A gloom settled on his face, and deep furrows appeared on his forehead, as if ploughed by a sickening pain. But it was only for a moment.

      Thirty-five minutes later the jury returned to give their verdict. A silence, so dead that a pinfall could have been heard, fell on the gaping crowd. A minute later the prisoner followed with quick and steady step and took his seat in the dock. With piercing eye he scanned deliberately each member of the jury, and with an audible sigh he gripped the side of the box and sat down.

      "Gentlemen of the jury, state through your foreman if you have arrived at a verdict."

      "We have."

      "Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?"

      "Guilty, sir," was the quiet answer.

      The silence that followed was more potent than the speech. The prisoner straightened himself up in an almost indifferent attitude, and passed his hand slowly over his forehead. Another minute of silence deeper than before, and the judge in solemn tones of quiet authority said,

      "Stand up."

      For the moment his lips trembled more than once, but he maintained the same sad composure.

      "How old are you?"

      "Twenty-one, sir," he replied, in a firm voice.

      "Where were you born?"

      "Kansas, sir."

      "Are you married or unmarried?"

      "Unmarried, sir."

      "Are you temperate or intemperate?"

      "Intemperate, sir."

      "What did you say?"

      "Intemperate, sir."

      "Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?"

      "Nothing," he answered quietly and unhesitatingly; "only I ain't guilty."

      The judge told the prisoner that he had been accorded a fair and impartial trial, and he could not see how with the evidence before them the jury could have reached any other conclusion than they had. Besides, the prisoner had shown by his treatment of people who had given him every kindness that he was capable of any crime, and had committed many. "It only remains for me," he continued in slow, steady tones, "to confer upon you the penalty which the law prescribes, and that is, that you be taken from here to the jail whence you came, and on December the fifteenth you are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead — and may God have mercy on your soul."

      The prisoner bowed and sat down. There was not a trace of emotion visible. Deeper and deeper sank the silence. He arose impassively and held out his hand to be bound with irons. Then with quickened and measured step he passed out to his doom.

      A pang of unutterable sorrow swept over me. Doomed to die, and he so young! The strange stillness that brooded over that autumn afternoon seemed to make his approaching death the more ghastly and appalling. In her home one hundred miles away was his mother, bowed down to the grave. I hurried out of the court-room into the street below just in time to see the prisoner mounting the double-seated carriage, guarded on the right and the left. It was now six o'clock. Without a moments delay I hastened to the place of confinement, in the hope that I might be of some service to him in an hour that he needed it most. The entrance lay through a wicket-gate, where I presented my credentials. I was then admitted to the guard-room, in the centre of which was the prisoner's cell.

      It was dark, quite dark, in that small iron-barred cage. The guards — for there were two of them outside — watched my approach in silence.

      "I have come to see you, sir," I said, stretching my hand through the bars. "Perhaps I can be of some help and comfort to you."

      He shook hands heartily and stepped back a pace or two. "Glad you've come to see me," he replied, in brusque, guttural tones, and with a somewhat indifferent air. There was a peculiar emphasis and inflexion on the personal pronoun.

      "We are sent into this world, you know, to make life less difficult for each other."

      "Guess that's so," he said, and shrugged his shoulders.

      "What kind of a chance, my boy, have you had in life?"

      He was silent.

      "You know," I continued, "your position is very serious. Have you had any chance in life?"

      He gripped the iron bar with his right hand as if trying to suppress for a moment a rising emotion. He looked up at me and a shadow seemed to creep over his face. There was pain in his eyes.

      "Yes," he began, falteringly, "I've had a good chance, sir, and a good mother, too."

      "We all owe much to mother," I said. "Some of us owe everything. Where did you get off the track?"

      "When I wanted to be my own boss and have my own way."

      "How old were you when you left home?"

      "I was just fourteen. I was brought up in my early boyhood to go to Sunday-school and church, and when I was fourteen I ran away from home, and I've been running away ever since."

      Then followed the story of the intervening years, told in Western dialect, and of his first imprisonment, for a paltry offence, with thugs and thieves in the State of Illinois, where he received his first impetus to a wild and criminal life in the farther West.

      I questioned him closely as to how much he knew of life when he left home. He was a boy just like other boys of his age, he said, with new surprises bursting daily upon his awakening consciousness, making him unsteady and mercurial like the fitful shadows that chase themselves across the sea. And I do not hesitate to assert that Ernest —— would never have had the sentence of death passed upon him had he not been incarcerated in a prison at fifteen. That a youth should have been made a criminal, rather than a citizen, by being immured in a common jail, is surely a terrible indictment of the present penal system.

      Immediately after his release he joined a gang of desperadoes, some of whom had been his associates during his imprisonment. For six years they roamed the Western States, a band of outlaws, holding up people at the point of the revolver, and all the while living, as he said, a charmed life.

      Along the corridors the prisoners, with their faces against the bars, were straining their necks to catch the tale of his adventures. He spoke with as much composure as if we were sitting around a camp-fire at an evening meal. Could it be that even at this moment he was thinking he might again escape the penalty of his crime? Had he not broken jail before? Had he not evaded the posse a hundred times, even when he felt their hot breath on his cheek?

      "And you never once thought that defeat would come to you some day?"

      "Defeat?" he replied, with an air of bravado. "We fellows never buck at nothing."

      A grim smile came over the faces of the guards, as if to remind him that he was now under a much stricter surveillance. He cast a swift glance at them from under his eyebrows, and sat down on the bench at the end of the cell. Just at that moment his brother appeared in the guard-room, and the cheerful manner in which they greeted each other struck me with astonishment.

      The brother was a little taller and somewhat older, and might be distinguished from Ernest by his quiet and unobtrusive demeanor. For some years he had been in the service of the United States Government, and had arrived just in time to hear the judge give the charge to the jury.

      They stood so closely against the bars that their lips almost touched. For a few minutes they conversed under their breath, and although I had gone back but a few feet, I did not hear a syllable. Occasionally I thought I saw on Ernest's face a pained and anxious expression. He was listening, almost straining to hear, and the movement of his brother's lips indicated serious and rapid speech.

      I stepped forward to say good night. The brother, his face more coloured than when he entered, took a firm grip of my hand and expressed his thanks for the visit.

      During the four weeks that followed I saw the condemned man almost daily. At no time did he ever show a sign of grief or despondency. Indeed, as the days went by he grew more indifferent to the seriousness of his position, and would chat with much pride about his escapades on the great plains of the Western States.

      Meanwhile, his lawyer had applied for the issue of a new trial, and ultimately went to Ottawa to make personal representations to the Department of Justice.

      The prisoner never ceased to reiterate his belief that a new trial would be granted, and to express confidence in the ability of his lawyer to regain him his freedom. At that moment it seemed as if this was the only hope that was left to him, and he clung to it like a shipwrecked sailor clings to a floating spar. There was something almost heroic in the patience with which he endured the suspense of waiting, when life was measured out by days and the shadow was already on the dial.

      One afternoon about four o'clock I found him more excited than usual. He was in a corner of the cell, with his head resting on his right hand. In the other corner was the death-watch, and I sat down between them. He showed very little interest in my coming, and would sometimes walk up and down at a short and rapid pace. For a while I was impressed with the thought that the hope he had cherished had been shattered at last, and yet I had a strange intuition — the more, too, as I watched the changing aspect of his face and the strained and sullen expression of his eyes — that some new situation had arisen, so secret and so absorbing as to preclude even the common courtesies which he had extended to me at other times.

      Half an hour later his brother came in, and putting his hands high up on the bars, spoke to him many cheering words.

      "Any message from Ottawa?" I said to him.

      "No," he replied, "but I am sure we will hear of a new trial any minute."

      It was five o'clock when I left the cell, and following me came the death-watch, who was to be relieved by another constable already waiting outside. This meant, of course, that the attention of the other two guards was diverted for a moment to us. As I was passing through the outer guard-room I overheard him say to his brother:

      "Cheer up, old boy, there's sure to be good news to-night from Ottawa."

      They were still standing in the same position, their arms high above their heads, touching the bars, and talking in low, deep tones, when the door closed behind me.

      By this time, as it was getting dark, the guards turned on the lights and began to finish their duties prior to the arrival of the night-guard.

      At six o'clock, as was the custom, the officer in charge ordered the prisoner to the adjoining room. He walked out, accompanied by the death-watch, and sat on a bench in front of a barred window facing the street, while the third constable remained in the outer guard-room. Thereupon the officer entered the cell, and, being satisfied that nothing had been left during the day, came to the door and said to the prisoner peremptorily, "All right."

      Immediately the prisoner walked towards the door, and then stepped back, as if to allow the officer to pass out. As he did so he turned round quickly and flashed two revolvers in the faces of the two men.

      "Make no move, or I'll blow your brains out!"

      There was a calmness and deliberation about his attitude that made the threat the more startling. He took three steps backwards and got the constable in the outer guard-room in line with the weapon in his left hand.

"Throw down your arms," he shouted, . . . "I'm a desperate man."

      "Throw down your arms," he shouted, "and make no move toward that alarm bell! I'm a desperate man."

      Then he ordered the three men into his cell, and demanded the revolvers and cartridge belts which two of them carried. Securing these, he locked the cell door and walked in his heavy shackles to the place where the keys were kept, and unfastened his feet.

      His face was white as death. "I'm a desperate man fighting for my life," he said, "and nothing is going to stop me."

      He went up to the cell and, taunting the imprisoned guards, kissed his hand to them. "Good-bye, boys," he said, in a light-hearted manner, "there's a horse waiting for me outside."

      All this took but a few moments, and so perfectly had his plans worked out that before the arrival of the night-guards he had a lead of fifteen minutes in his race for life.

      The news travelled from lip to lip, and in less than two hours the whole country was thrown into a state of panic. Without a moment’s delay every man on the police force turned out mounted, and patrols were stationed at all bridges and trails leading from the city.

      "Where was his brother?" people asked, "and was not the Methodist minister the last man in the cell with him?" Thus they talked in their excitement, and thus they debated. Ten minutes later his brother was arrested and charged with assisting him to escape. He had in his pocket a pair of oil-skin moccasins, which he said he was taking to the barracks, and in his other pocket some heavy calibre cartridges. On this charge he was afterwards brought up for trial, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty, to which they attached a strong recommendation for mercy.

      The difficulty of tracing the fugitive was increased by a heavy snowstorm which had covered up his footprints about the hour of the escape. Every possible clue was followed up, and trains and conveyances leaving the city were minutely inspected by armed men in plain clothes.

      Late that night he called at a rancher's home seven miles away, and asked food and shelter for the night. The rancher, seeing his pitiful condition, and as the night was cold and stormy, took him into his kitchen and gave him food and clothing.

      During the absence of the rancher the next day, he returned to the place and took away, among other things, a suit of clothes and a military cloak.

      About this time it was reported in town that a pony and saddle had been stolen. The day following the pony was seen making its way to the stable. The police traced its footmarks to a home sixteen miles out, belonging to a respectable and well-known rancher. They inquired if the murderer had been there, and on being assured that no one had seen him, they departed. However, it was proved beyond doubt that at that very moment he was hiding in a room upstairs.

      It must be said that about this time there appeared in the press the account of a desperado in the State of Washington who had shot down people in cold blood for giving information to his pursuers regarding his whereabouts. This, no doubt, together with the threat he made when he entered, so terrified them that they were afraid under penalty of their lives to reveal his location. He had said: "Don't think I'm alone. I have my friends watching this house, and if you tell the Police you will be shot down. I give you warning."

      Indeed, as his desperate condition became recognized it haunted the whole community like a nightmare, and ranchers living in the outlying parts deserted their homes and came into the city.

      Reports of people being held up in their homes gradually leaked out and were usually accredited. But in every case the information came too late to be of any service in locating his whereabouts.

      Never was a community so terrorized into secrecy by an outlaw. A threatening letter, written by him on the notepaper of a local hotel, was posted to the foreman of the jury who had found him guilty of murder. Women became almost hysterical, and were even afraid to go from room to room in their homes when night fell. That he had visited the city under cover of darkness few doubted. This, at least, was certain, that for five weeks he was at no time out of sight of the place where the brother was then confined, and from which he himself had made his memorable dash for liberty in the very shadow of the scaffold.

      The Police, so long baffled in their attempts to follow his movements, at last determined to surround the city with a cordon of mounted men. At this time the total strength of the local Royal North-West Mounted Police force numbered about fifteen, so that in order to carry out the plans effectively thirty men were sworn in for special service.

      On Sunday morning, exactly forty-five days from the date of the escape, the Police were all assembled in front of the barracks and divided into five groups. Each group was placed in command of an officer and apportioned to a particular section of the district.

      It was one of those days that so often come to the West at this season of the year. The wind was blowing cold and strong from the north, and the thermometer had already fallen twenty-five degrees below freezing point.

      At nine o'clock the Police set out, carefully inspecting every nook and corner likely to afford him a hiding-place. It is told of a brave member of one party who set out that morning, that one day, on the outskirts of the city, while he was searching a coop full of fine Plymouth Rock hens, a goose suddenly squawked with a very loud voice. The brave young rifleman ran for shelter into the barn opposite, all the while unconscious that behind the door was the very man he had set out to find!

      The detachment which went in a north-easterly direction came upon two houses within sight of each other, about five miles from the city. The force then divided and began to search both houses simultaneously. From the farther house a rider came galloping at full speed to report that he had found in a haystack a large hole containing food and bedding and a military cloak which corresponded to the one that had been stolen on the night of the escape.

      Immediately it was concluded that they had tracked the murderer to the very door, although the two men living there denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. Indeed, there were indications that he had hurriedly taken refuge in the house on the first approach of the Police. A constable entered and went down into the cellar, when he discovered in a corner a hole large enough to accommodate a man. It was so dark that nothing could be seen, and after procuring a lantern he returned holding it in front of him.

      "Here's where the —— must be," he said, when he almost dashed the lantern into the face of a man. He jumped back hurriedly and cocked his revolver.

      "Who are you calling a ——?" a voice called out angrily, and grazing the constable's ear whizzed a bullet and still another. The constable retraced his steps as quickly as possible, and following him came the fugitive, who fired a shot at the guard outside. They returned the fire with twelve shots from their carbines, one of which struck his heel, whereupon he retreated to the cellar.

      It was decided to set the house on fire, for which purpose a bundle of hay was placed on either side. The posse gradually closed round on all sides, and with the butt of their rifles smashed the windows, as these were a menace to their own safety. By this time the fire was increasing, and dense clouds of smoke almost hid the house from view. When the flames were well under way another shot came from the cellar.

      "My God!" cried the Inspector, "the man has committed suicide." But suspecting that it might only be an attempt to inveigle him into a trap he shouted, "If you are down there you had better come out."

      "If I come out you will shoot me."

      Much parleying ensued, and although the Inspector gave him his word of honour again and again that he would not be shot, still he refused to believe him.

      "If I come up," he shouted again, "I will be hanged anyway."

      "Your brother," the Inspector replied, "is in the guard-room. The least you can do is to say good-bye to him."

      The fire was now beyond control.

      "Boys," he called from the cellar, "I'm going to kill myself. You will find a letter on the floor to my mother. Come and get it before it is burned, and for God's sake put out the fire. I don't want to be roasted alive."

      "You have only a minute or two left to make your decision."

"A minute later he appeared with his hands over his head."

      "Promise you won't shoot me, and I will come up." A minute later he appeared with his hands over his head. "Boys, I don't want to be hanged," he said, "and I don't want to kill any of you, but I guess I'll have to give myself up. I'm sick of the whole business." He spoke freely to the members of the posse he knew, and expressed regret that one of the guards from whom he had escaped was sentenced to a year in the penitentiary.

      "Boys, I'm sorry I was such a coward when B—— came down the cellar. I thought he was a civilian, and I'm sorry I did not take a piece out of his ear the same as he took out of my foot. I could have got away any time. It was dead easy. I jumped on the train two or three times as it was pulling up the grade near Sheppard, but I jumped off again. Anybody can get on or off there. I stayed in the country for the sake of my brother. I couldn't go away and leave him. So I stayed around to help him out."

      "Are you a good shot?" some one asked.

      "I don't say it as a boast, boys, but you can bet I am. I once shot a horse on a run at a thousand yards, and I can shoot holes in a fifty-cent piece thrown in the air." He spoke very affectionately of his mother and brother, as he had never failed to do during his previous confinement.

      When the news of the capture became known the city was thrown into the wildest excitement. Everywhere there was the greatest admiration for the men who had effected the capture of the desperado, and without shedding of blood.

      The heroic service rendered Canada by the men who guarded her frontiers in the West in the wild days now gone, and preserved the safety of human life and property, has not yet been sufficiently recognized. This we may be sure of, that no history of the Canadian West will ever be complete without a prominent place given to the records of those men who in the pioneer days suffered isolation far out on the lonely plains, and held the supremacy of British law and order against the freebooters, whiskey smugglers and outlaws that crossed the border. It seems almost incredible that a mere handful of men should have accomplished so much in such a short time, and in a territory almost as large as Europe. That the Canadian West differs greatly in the conditions of life to-day from the West of the Republic to the south is largely due to the work of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.

      In the barracks the brother, about to be removed to Regina, overheard the guards whispering of the capture to each other. He broke down completely, and all through the night cried like a child. Ever since his arrest he was more interested in his brother's welfare than in his own. Whenever there was the least stir round about he would grow anxious and ask the guard on duty if his brother had been captured. Through the iron bars of the door he watched in vain hour after hour to catch a glimpse of him as he passed by.

      Next day, shackled, handcuffed and guarded by five policemen, Ernest stood in the same dock from which six weeks before he had been sent to his doom. When he arose at the order of the court the judge said, "You are given a reprieve from the sentence of the court from to-morrow until a week from to-morrow, and the sentence of this court is that you be taken back whence you came, and on that date hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God have mercy on your soul."

      The respite came as a great surprise to him, since he expected that on the morrow he would be led to the gallows. For a moment the cloud that rested on his face passed away. Outside the crowd that had filled the court-room from early morning was waiting on the sidewalk. The doomed man appeared, chained so heavily that he could walk only six inches to a step. He poised his head high in the air, and never once cast a glance to right or left. His hair was matted and very long, and a thin beard covered the side of his face. He was fatter than when I saw him last in prison, and his cheeks, hitherto so pallid, glowed with a dark red color. He wore light brown moccasins, and over his shoulders, thrown well back, was the military cloak, now almost threadbare.

      Every precaution was taken by the Police to prevent a recurrence of the hold-up. Five men were on duty in the guard-house continually, while a sentry was placed outside.

      For the first time the condemned man now realized that every avenue of hope was closed to him. To the death-watch he related the story of the six weeks without the vanity that characterized the recital of his exploits before the escape.

      "I had," he said, "a bead on Inspector D—— when that officer pushed his rifle through the window. I could have turned round and shot the man at the other window. I was standing in the darkness of the cellar, and it was quite easy for me to see the officers without being seen myself. But I did not wish to shoot anybody, for I had already enough on my head."

      From this time on he never more referred to his past except on the eve of his execution, when he handed me a synopsis of his life. He settled down to the seriousness of his position. Occasionally he would ask questions regarding some spiritual truths he had learned in his childhood. He had only a vague and misty conception of them after these years. A strain from a hymn that his mother sang, or a word from a prayer that she had taught him in these old days — that was all he could remember. Oh, the blighting curse of sin!

      His brother was allowed to see him for a few minutes before being taken to Regina to serve his sentence.

      "Good-bye, Ernest," he struggled to say, his hands trembling with emotion. Other words he tried to speak and could not. They embraced each other in silence.

      Now the last day had come. There was a general expectation that he would make some confession of his guilt before the day was over. When I called to see him he was sitting with writing-paper on his knee. He rose to his feet and took my hand graciously as I entered the cell.

      "Waiting for you," he said, in a quiet, meditative manner that brought out in sharp contrast the indifferent attitude of previous days. "You are very kind to me."

      "We are all brothers, and I am only doing a brother's duty." Whatever his thoughts were when these words were spoken he made it possible for me from that moment to speak straight to his heart. One thing he had retained — so true and abiding that I wondered then and since that it did not redeem his life — a boy's love for his mother.

      There were some things spoken at that hour which cannot be repeated — deep and dark things about which my lips must be forever sealed. He had been speaking with a doleful strain in his voice. Here and there he would stop and throw open a door in that subterranean world — the sixth hell — so that I might photograph the scene on my mind and go back to the youth of the country with a message coloured with a truer and more practical realism. It was a terrible portrayal of the tragedy enacted every day under the smoke counterpane, such a picture as no man could paint but him who had made his bed there.

      When he had finished he said, "Here is a message that I have written for the young men. They may listen to me through you, and take warning before it is too late." He gave me also the last letter he wrote to his mother and brother.

      "These," he said, "may bring them some comfort. Poor mother!" and he broke off, choked with the anguish of his heart. "Poor mother!" he tried to say again, "she does not deserve all this. I would die a thousand deaths if I could only take the disgrace —" He never finished the sentence. His sorrow was too deep for words.

      "Tell mother how badly I feel that I should cause so much sorrow in her heart and bring such sadness on her head, and tell Willie to stay at home as long as there is a home to stay in."

      He leaned against the wall of the cell, faint with the terrible burden that weighed him down.

      "Ernest," I said, drawing him toward me, "it will be all right. Dry your tears, my boy. There is no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. Ernest," and I looked into his tear-flooded eyes, "there is something yet to be done." He gazed a long, deep gaze indeed, and his cheeks quivered rapidly. "Something yet to be done." For the moment I hesitated to speak further. So great was his grief I was afraid lest any word of mine might add to it. "There is something you owe to yourself and to God and to the world."

      He turned away his head. "For myself I do not wish to know, but there can be no forgiveness, my boy, without it, and you — oh, you cannot go to-morrow to meet death unforgiven. I do not wish to know to-night, but the world will wish to know to-morrow. Ernest, are you guilty or not guilty? If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I shall expect an answer in the morning."

      There was no reply. He stretched out his hand to the wall as if for support, and his chest rose and fell like the heaving sea.

      "Your burden is heavy, my boy, but Christ is the burden-bearer. I can only tell you in this hour of His love for you. Whatever you may have been, whatever you are now — His love can save you."

      The darkness — and in that little place it was always dark — was falling black and gloomy, relieved only by the glimmering light from the window opposite. There was neither sound of voice nor foot in the corridors outside, for to both guards and prisoners alike the tragic hour sent out its solemn message. A hush, strange and weird, like that which precedes the coming of a great event, settled over them, broken only by stifled sobs like the cries of a child in the night.

      I quoted to him from the prayer of Newman's that will linger in our memories so long as language lives and hearts love hoping, that it might be to him a ladder of light from the crypt of despair:

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Should'st lead me on;  I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead Thou me on.  I loved the garish day, and spite of fears,  Pride ruled my will; — remember not past years."

      Sounds that were scarcely audible came from his sealed lips.

      "I must go now, Ernest — you will need some rest."

      He turned round and put his hand on my shoulder with a look in his eyes that even after six years haunts me with its unutterable sadness. "Will you be with me to the very last to-morrow?"

      'Yes, Ernest — right to the scaffold."

      Before five o'clock next morning a carriage came for me. Through the dull mist, faint and low, the stars were shining. Not a word was spoken. The very houses seemed asleep. Here and there, however, we could discern the shimmer of a light in a window; for some people, unable to sleep, had risen early. My heart beat faster and faster as we moved rapidly to the last scene in this terrible tragedy.

      Now, and for the first time, a double sentry was pacing the roadway outside the gates. "Halt!" they cried, raising their muskets. It was so sudden and unexpected that it took my breath away. They carefully examined my credentials, and having satisfied themselves as to my identity, admitted me to the guard-room.

      The prisoner was holding his face against the bars, evidently awaiting my coming, and, almost spontaneously, we greeted each other in a very friendly manner.

      "I hope you rested a little during the night."

      "Not much," he replied. "I spent most of the time reading the passages you marked for me."

      Meanwhile, breakfast was brought to him, but he ate little. He was stripped of the prison garb and dressed in clean linen and a dark suit, which did not seem to be much worn. As soon as the guard departed he said to me, "When it's all over promise me you will write to mother; make it as easy as you can for her."

      There was a plaintive note in his voice. His mother was his constant thought in those last days, no less than my own. I had yet to learn, when the heat and fever of the day was over, that I had assented to an almost impossible task.

      He found much solace in the hymns of his childhood during my former visits, and now for the last time I sang, "There's not a friend like the lowly Jesus," and read the Shepherd Psalm with a few comments interpolated here and there.

      We knelt down to pray. Beside us was the death-watch, and behind us the guards. I put my arm around him, and he gripped my hand in his. His frame shook violently, and for a while he seemed to be plunged in a paroxysm of pain. It was hard to pray — never so hard. Without delay, for there were but a few moments left to us, I said, "Now, Ernest, what is your answer?"

      "Oh, I'm guilty! I'm guilty!" he wailed out piteously, and a great flood of tears fell on the cold stone floor. The pent-up feelings had burst. The iron will was broken. The secret was revealed at last.

      "Oh! — oh — oh!" he moaned, and lifted his arms up and down in rapid motion, "God forgive me! — forgive me — I'm guilty! I'm guilty!"

      And more beautiful than the dawn that was breaking came heaven's own sweet light.

      "And now, Ernest, this is for you — the broken body and shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul unto everlasting life."

      We rose to our feet. The storm was over. Like a ship with torn sail and shattered mast, he had entered into the haven of perfect peace. With the back of his hand he brushed the tears from his cheeks, and, turning round to the guard, he stretched his hands through the bars, saying, "Good-bye, boys, you've been kind to me."

      Then he turned to the death-watch and repeated the farewell with all the emphasis of a man with but a moment to live.

      There was a knock at the outer door. Divining the meaning of the hurrying feet and muffled sounds, he exclaimed with quiet resignation, "It's R——" With this he threw his arms round my neck, leaned his head on my shoulder, and expressed his gratitude again and yet again. There was no delay. The door was thrown open, and the hangman with bleared eyes and bloated face entered in evident excitement.

      "Morning," he said in a gruff voice; "stretch out your arms." He buckled the prisoner's wrists and pinioned them cross-wise to his breast, and the dark procession moved slowly to the scaffold. In Ernest's buttonhole, sweet and fragrant, was the white rose I had given him that morning.

      A group of officials and press men had gathered in the jail-yard. We began to climb the steps to the scaffold, when, midway, he leaned towards me and said, "Won't you pray for me once more?" The procession stopped. A brief prayer was offered, and he was heard to whisper the "Amen."

      When we reached the platform I stood in front of him, and, while the hangman adjusted a white cap over his eyes, repeated these words:

"Other refuge have I none,  Hangs my helpless soul on Thee."

      The hangman was impatient. He raised his hand to indicate that everything was ready. But I persisted and finished the verse, and then repeated, slowly and softly, the old familiar prayer,

      "Our Father who art in heaven, . . . deliver — us — from evil."

      The grey mist of that February morning enshrouded the limp and lifeless form of a young man who had a good chance in life — but missed it.
 

THE SCENE AT THE OPERA HOUSE.

      IT was four o'clock. The sharp, frosty air sent the blood tingling through our veins. Above and beyond was the clear blue sky, dotted here and there like the ocean with myriads of islands, flecked with the gold and purple of the western sun.

      The throngs were moving, hurrying in haste, to the old Opera House, which has since passed away with many traditions and landmarks of the early days. Before the hour of service every seat was occupied with men, old and young, and none younger than sixteen.

      Packed closely in the long galleries and standing in every available space in the large auditorium, they waited, these western men, in deep and respectful silence. Behind me was a chorus of male voices, and so crowded was the stage in front, as I arose to speak, there was scarcely standing room. The drunkard and the gambler were there; the professional man and the artisan; the old-timer with his bronzed and beaten face and the unsuspecting youth hardly awake to the mystery of life. I looked across that human sea, dark as it seemed to be that Sunday afternoon from the strain and sorrow of the week before, and there above it all I saw but one thing, a little white cloud rising out of the sea — a human soul.

      "Men of Calgary, from the prison cell I come to you bearing in my hands a message written with the tears and blood of a young man who last week died on the scaffold. Indeed to young men the world over, beyond the reach of my living voice to-day, I fain would speak, for such was his wish.

      "It was said by a philosopher of the old French school of materialism, 'However cleverly we may have carved the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny ever reappears in it.' It would seem at first sight as if this interpretation was true to the facts of life and experience. But in the last analysis, while there is much that is beyond our ken, one thing remains immutable as the law that binds the planet to its orbit and the ocean to the shore, 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' What men call Fate to-day — and this word is often a convenient subterfuge for the man who gambles away his life and fritters away his years in sin — God calls Consequence. Every sin has its own penalty just as every seed has its own development. There is a law of cause and effect — a law of continuity regulating the reproductive process. The substance of the seed passes into the plant which springs from it. So is it with the retributive consequences of sin. Every act is going to reproduce itself. Like begets like. Whatever is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. The folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth and then the crime of the man. Some day we will reap the harvest.

      "Make no mistake about it. There is a strange Nemesis in life that will never allow wrongdoing to go unrequited in this world or in any other world; and on the trail of every evil-doer follow the hounds that never know defeat. What we do in the dark to-day will be revealed in the light to-morrow.

'The tissue of the life to be We weave in colours all our own;  And in the field of destiny We reap as we have sown.'

      "Again, there is much said about environment — and the last word has not yet been spoken on this subject — that man is the product of circumstances, nothing more, nothing less; that he cannot help being good or bad; that he is no more accountable for his conduct than a flower is responsible for its colour. It is said also — and some of you here have been saying it, too, during these unhappy days — that the issues of life are determined by antecedent causes over which a man has no control; that character and destiny are simply questions of what a man eats, where he lives, and who his parents were.

      "Methinks we need no other argument against this doctrine than the testimony of our own consciousness. There is nothing on which we have clearer knowledge than the consciousness of human freedom. We know we have power to do or to leave undone. 'I have no one to blame but myself for being here,' were the significant words spoken to me from the prison cell. Every day we are making choices and deciding on courses of action that affect the whole of life.

      "The influence of environment and heredity is not to be overlooked, but to such an extent has this truth been carried that, like the old religious theory of predestination, it has become to many of you the Alpha and Omega of a stark gospel that ignores half the facts of life. Heredity is not everything. The son of Jesse James, the notorious Missouri outlaw, passed the final examination before the State Board, and is now a full-fledged lawyer. He was left an orphan at six years, with a heritage of distrust and suspicion that might have crushed him. He has redeemed the name from obloquy, and bids fair to lead an honoured and useful life. It takes more than heredity to crush a human soul. What have you to say about the girl who has kept her soul pure as the lily, like Browning's poetic child Pompilia, although born in the moral miasma of Haymarket or Whitechapel? 'Life is a mysterious block,' said the French writer. Very well, let us keep the figure. The world is the studio in which the block is carved and chiselled by the thought and action of to-day into the living statuary of our destiny.

'It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll,  I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.'

      "So, men of Calgary, I give you the story of his young and tragic life, told to me with all the emphasis of a man awaiting the approach of doom. He was born in Kansas, October 12th, 1882, and at the age of fourteen his father died. Then he went with his widowed mother to Buffalo, Wyoming, and thence to Trinidad, Colorado, where he enlisted in the United States Infantry for the Philippines. At San Francisco, on the eve of his departure for the seat of war, he was examined in the hospital, and when they discovered his left lung was diseased, he was given his discharge. He wandered over the Western States, committing every crime in the calendar, until he was branded as an outlaw and a fugitive from justice. For four days he went back to see his mother, the first visit he had paid her in six years. God help the young man who never thinks it worth while in six years to travel back again to mother and to home! Then he crossed the line into British Columbia. Ultimately he found his way to the district north of Calgary, and at Ponoka, where his mother was visiting some friends, he was arrested on the charge of horse-stealing. While in the custody of the police he jumped the train and walked to Lacombe, then to Calgary and to Banff, where he was arrested the second time. He was sentenced to three years servitude in Stony Mountain, but was soon brought back to Calgary and tried for murder.

      "What the trial and its issue was I need not now repeat. The sad and tragic ending of a life so young and not altogether without promise will ever remain one of the most thrilling and terrible chapters in the annals of criminal life in our country.

      "A criminal at fourteen! Oh, that I could turn the hands of the clock to-day to that hour in a boy's life so that the eye of the nation may see it. Fourteen! fourteen!

'And a boy's will is the wind's will,  And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

      "Fourteen! and the young man wakens from his long reverie the passion for freedom flows in his veins — freedom at any price — consequences are small, risks are nothing, and he tosses his cap in the air. Fourteen! Oh, wonderful magic hour, when to the touch of youth the golden gate flies open, and the meteor morn strikes ridge and hilltop beyond and beyond; there is neither equipoise to his thinking nor equilibrium to his living. He is a Rob Roy in the making. He lives in a world of his own, ne plus ultra, where nobody ever comes and so few ever understand.

      "In the last days, when his wild spirit was broken and I had gained his confidence, I asked what had brought him to all this, and he began with the significant words, 'It might have been different with me if I had had a father to guide me when I was fourteen. I read novels of the Diamond Dick, Nick Carter and James Boys class, and they filled my mind with wild and false notions of life. They led me to bad habits, bad companions and cigarette smoking. I learned to handle firearms, and I do not know if there was ever one put up that I could not take to pieces in five minutes.'

      "And now, men of Calgary, I shall read to you the message from this young man, written by his own hand, February 1st, 1904, twenty-four hours before he went to the scaffold:

      "Oh, young man, standing on the bridge between the old and the new, building your castles in Spain and travelling through Bohemia — wait a minute! The promised land does not always lie beyond the mountains, and all is not gold that glitters. They say that on the way to the Yukon — that modern Eldorado — there may be seen the bleached skeletons of those fevered wanderers who, in the first mad rush for gold, perished amid the wild wastes of that Great North Land.

      "Dream away, young man, dream away, I hope we shall never grow so faithless and materialistic as to destroy the hopes and visions of these tender years. But if your dreams are fermenting a love for a life of romance and hairbreadth escapes, for the green of the gambling table and the glitter of the grog shop, then you are following a will o' the wisp, an ignis fatuus, that will only make more bitter the ruin when it comes.

      "Oh, fathers and mothers, remember the pregnant words from the prison-cell. Fourteen! fourteen! the hour of crisis in your boy's life, and the hour of your responsibility, too. Give him your sympathy and counsel, teach him to know himself and the biology of his being. Fill your home with laughter and music. Home first — home last! — and you have found the key to the young man problem. But ignore the sportfulness of youth, de ride him because he prefers a game of baseball to the reading of a Bible story, pull down the blinds and close the shutters fast, dress yourself in black and croak like an Alpine crow, uproot the sunflower and plant the weeping willow — and do not be surprised if late at night the door-bell rings and your boy staggers drunk across the carpet.

      "There is but one word more. Oh! God, if there is a man here, old or young, indifferent to this warning voice, wake him with a start. Keep the bell tolling until it will only seem to say, home — home — my father's home. It is said that when the Lexington went down on the Atlantic coast in a dreadful storm, the bell on the wreck could be heard for days and days tolling its warning notes to the sailors far out at sea. So from the wreck of a human life a warning bell is tolling, tolling. Listen, men of Calgary! It speaks — a saved soul — a lost life! 'One man was saved on the cross, that none might despair; and only one, that none might presume.'"
 

THE AFTERMATH.
I.

      THROUGH the auditorium groups of men remained behind in different attitudes long after the audience had dispersed. A man, stretching his arm over the shoulders of two men, was pulling the collar of my coat with his long, thin fingers. I was talking earnestly with a score of men across the stage, and for a moment paid no heed to him until he gave me a jerk that almost drew me off my feet.

      He was tall, over six feet, and of a somewhat slender build. His face, which looked as if it had not been washed for many days, was pinched almost to a point; the forehead was exceptionally broad, and his dark eyes, hidden behind a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses, were red and swollen. A scraggy beard covered his cheeks, and his coal-black hair was long and knotted, after the fashion of the great unwashed. He wore a loose, saggy coat, quite unsuited for those freezing days, and round his neck a woollen scarf in double fold.

      "I want to see you, sir," he said, his face quite contorted with excitement.

      "Yes, sir, what is the matter?"

      "Oh, I have gone all wrong."

      "Drink?"

      "Everything."

      "Where are you boarding?"

      "Nowhere."

      "Where are you working?"

      "Nowhere."

      "Where did you sleep last night?"

      "Nowhere."

      "Then, where do you get your meals?"

      "Anywhere! And I was not always like this."

      "No man ever is," I remarked, "but it is not what you have been, it is what you hope to be."

      "I have no hope, sir," and he shook his head sadly. "No hope but —"

      "You do not mean that," I interrupted. "Life surely has, even yet, something better in store for you."

      "Yes, sir, I mean it, I mean it — annihilation, anything! and it cannot come too soon."

      "Well, a man usually gets in this world what he seeks after. Sit down a minute. Tell me, what have you been seeking after?"

      He threw back his shoulders and stared at me for a little. "Happiness," he replied, with a deep, sonorous voice, "like many another man who never found it."

      "On the other hand!" I replied, "quite like many another man who has found it. Evidently it all depends upon the motive and spirit with which you set out after it, for no man with a true heart and purpose ever wholly missed it."

      "Hardly true to the facts, sir," he continued. "Happiness is a gift, just like genius in art or in poetry; but a man has to suffer the pain of disappointment like me, at the end of fruitless years, before he wakens up to it. Surely I and other men like me can be forgiven for arriving at this conception of life."

      The sound of the man's voice had drawn to the stage a group of men — for many of whom he was stating the problem of their lives as well as his own. The gradual falling of his voice into a rich, sweet cadence produced quite an obvious effect on the men around, and indeed on myself.

      "I know there is no argument so conclusive as experience; but let me make this observation: What you have been seeking after is pleasure, which is to many people a misnomer for happiness. Pleasure may be a medium of gratification to the senses, but to a soul that longs, yearns indeed, for something more abiding, it is only Dead Sea fruit. And in the garden of life, boys," I continued, looking round on those faces that sin had so scarred, "there is other fruit, which if any man eat he will never hunger again. This, boys, is the experience of other men and of my own."

      The man had taken a seat and was now supporting his head with both his hands. Every eye was centred on him — this man with the black face and gold-rimmed eye-glasses and a soft, cultured voice.

      "Now, boys, I am going into the little room, where any of you may see me alone if you so wish."

      He was the first to follow. "Is there any way out?" he said, his fingers clutching the handle of the door.

      "Only one way, my friend — 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.'"

      "That is a long way for me to travel, but if that is the only way, God helping me, I will."

      He waited outside until the last man had come and gone. On our way home, I requested him to reveal his identity, and, after a little hesitation, he drew out of his pocket some papers which he had brought from England. "I can only ask you," he said, as he put them into my hand," that you regard my name with the same secrecy that a priest would do in the confessional. I have been living under an assumed name since I came to the West four years ago, for my father's sake."

      His father was a dignitary of the Established Church. He himself had graduated from Eton, winning scholarships that entitled him to special privileges in Cambridge. In those student days he had fallen into intemperate habits, which ultimately forced him to leave home for the seclusion of this western land.

      In the rooms attached to the church he sat down next day and wrote to his father. Meanwhile, he was appointed interim secretary of the Young Men's Club, and for three months filled the position in a manner that won for him the respect and admiration of us all. I can never think of the letter his father sent, as he besought him to return home, without feeling that here was a paraphrase of the simple story in the pearl of parables.

      We were sorry when he left us that summer afternoon. He made a very striking appearance as he stood on the platform chatting freely with a few friends, clad in a light grey suit, tan shoes and a white Panama hat. When the carriages were drawn into tension he stepped into the vestibule.

      "Good-bye," he said, raising his hat from his head and nodding to each of us, "Good-bye! I shall come back again to see you."

      He came back one day.
 

II.

      The escapades of the young desperado and his tragic end were published by the press over the whole continent. About three months later a rancher, living eighty miles from the city, came to see me. The parsonage had been under quarantine for three weeks, and the only approach to the study was by temporary steps which were placed under the window. The casement was of very narrow dimensions, and as he was a portly man of considerable weight I did not invite him in.

      "Can I come in?" he asked, as I threw up the window.

      "Certainly, if you can get in."

      With no little difficulty he was pulled inside, and after he had recovered from the somewhat exciting entry, he presented a card bearing the name of a young probationer, with the words thereon: "This will introduce Mr. ——, who wishes to get the question answered, What must I do to be saved?"

      He paced the floor in a very nervous manner, and there was a wild look in his eyes. For a moment I wondered if I were face to face with a crazy man, and with no possible chance of an exit.

      "Why have you come here?" I inquired, putting the card in my pocket.

      "To see you," he replied, falteringly, as if he were embarrassed.

      "Why need you come eighty miles to see me? Are there not ministers near your home?"

      "I followed the story of that murder case in the newspapers, and it got such a hold of me that I have not been able to get away from it. I am the worst man in all that community, and I am getting worse all the time."

      His words, earnest and vehement as they were, as once disarmed my fears. He snatched at every spiritual truth that was offered as though he had never heard of it before.

      Some souls are born into the spiritual world as a flower bursts into life on a June morning. There are other souls that cannot move a step until the fetters are broken through wrestling and tears. His was the peaceful passing, so quiet, indeed, that I was hardly conscious that the light had come.

      "What can I do now?" he asked, as he jumped to his feet.

      "Do the best you can do in your home and in your neighborhood, and let me hear from you later."

      It was one of those districts far away from any centre of religious or commercial activity, unvisited by a preacher at that time. It is incidental to the rapid settlement of the vast Province of Alberta that there should be such places which, even at this present hour, through the inadequate supply of men and money, the Church has not been able to reach. In the years to come, the spread of education and the commingling of so many elements in this western empire will produce, let us hope, such a race as the world has never seen — giants physically and mentally. But what place will be given to the moral and the religious, which, surely, is the crown and flower of evolution! Europe is strewn with the wrecks of nations that, amid the glory of material splendour, grew indifferent to those things which alone ensure the peace and integrity of empire. Let us lay the foundations now. It is, almost, now or never.

      His home was a very humble place, as indeed the homes of all pioneers are. But within a week he started a Sunday-school there for old and young folks, and, although missionaries have come and gone since that day, and he himself has gone away, too, the man whom I had first thought in my study to be demented is spoken of in that place as its first missionary.

      When the day of unfoldment comes, and there are neither pioneers nor frontiers, the diadem on the brow of the Redeemer will reveal the trophies won by such men, and women, too, on the bleak and lonely prairies.

(THE END)