CHAPTER IX. THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE.

It was customary in Doveton to put sober offenders against the peace in the second floor rooms of the jail, for these, though not containing everything that a fastidious taste might desire, were well lighted and ventilated. But as the constable led Jack to jail, he thought upon his own despoiled melon patch, so he decided to put the young man into the dungeon which was reserved for the most depraved disturbers and desperate villains. As Jack was pushed into this receptacle he noticed, with a sinking of the heart, that the door was a foot thick, built of most chilling oak-tree hearts, and strapped with huge bars of iron. Not that he had contemplated escape; he was just then too feeble of soul to contemplate anything but his own iniquity; but he had the natural, healthful objection to restraint, and when restraint can be measured by the cubic foot it is depressing almost to idiocy. Then the constable shot four massive bolts, each one of which seemed to give Jack's heart a mighty thump as it grated and groaned into its proper place. Jack turned to look at the window. It was of rough glass, so that a prisoner could not look out; it was only six inches high, though its length was about two feet, and it was crossed both inside and outside by stout bars of iron let into the stone. The furniture, when Jack's eyes became sufficiently accustomed to the dim light to see it all, consisted of a dingy cot of canvas and a broken pitcher containing the water left by the cell's last occupant, who had gone to the state prison two months before for passing counterfeit money. The only decorations were some cobwebs, which in tone harmonized with the general effect of the interior, and an engraving, upon the stone of the lightest side of the cell, of a frightful looking being with horns, hoof and barbed tail, having beneath it the inscription, "ThE DEViL Taik Evry boDDy." The odor of the apartment was undesirable.

By the time Jack had learned this much, he threw himself upon the canvas cot, careless of what else there might be to observe, and sobbed violently. This, then, was the end of the boy who had been so good for a month, who was going to join the church and be useful in persuading other boys out of bad courses, and be a missionary, perhaps, and a minister at the very least! Everybody now would think him a hypocrite; he would probably be sent to the penitentiary for a year or two, for now that the proper occasion for recalling the fact had passed, he remembered to have heard that disturbing religious assemblages was a great crime in the eyes of the law. Perhaps they would send him to the reform school, which would be a thousand times worse than the penitentiary, for the word "reform" suggested as dreadful possibilities to Jack as it ever did to a self-made politician. When he came out again what would happen to him? He had never seen any persons but loafers pay any attention to discharged prisoners who made Doveton their abiding place. Nobody would let their boys play with him then—if, indeed, by that time he had enough youth and spirits left to want to play; he would have to sit on the back seats in church among the sad-eyed, uninteresting reprobates who now sat there, instead of among the neatly dressed boys who sat under the eyes of their parents and the preacher.

Then Jack thought of the hereafter, in the literal, material manner, which was the natural result of the religious teachings he had received. If angels knew everything and went wherever they pleased, and if his deceased brothers and sisters became angels just after they died—they had been angelic while they lived—how must they feel to see their well-born, carefully taught brother in so dreadful a place as a common prison? As Jack thought of it he wished the prison bed had a cover under which he could hide; but as it had not, he squeezed his face and flattened his nose upon the rough, dirty canvas. The thought of his parents recalled the wish, frequently felt by Jack, that somebody would understand him, know how earnestly he longed to be good—some one to whom he could tell some of the splendid thoughts he sometimes had—thoughts which would simply astonish his parents out of their senses, if he could feel free to tell them. Why didn't people give him credit for what was in him, instead of eternally finding fault with him for what came out of him? Was he a jug that he should be judged in such a manner? Looking the matter squarely in the face, however, how was any one to know what was inside of him except by what proceeded from him?

This train of reasoning was promptly dismissed as unpleasant in the extreme, and Jack began to search his pockets for something that might assist him in consuming time more endurably, when some one at the grating in the door startled him by exclaiming:

"Well, young man!"

Jack recognized the voice of his father, and his heart went down, down, down, apparently through the floor, and all the way into the depths of the middle of the western half of the Pacific Ocean, which, by careful investigation, Jack had determined was the geographical antipode of Doveton. Then the door opened, and Jack's father entered, and, oh, horror of horrors! he brought with him Mr. Daybright, the minister. Jack sat upon the side of the cot and nervelessly dropped his face into his hands and his elbows upon his knees.

"Well, young man," resumed the doctor, "what have you got to say for yourself?"

Jack preserved utter silence, but determined that he never before heard so exasperating a question.

"My poor boy," said Mr. Daybright, sitting down beside Jack and putting his arm around him, "Satan has indeed been making a mighty fight to secure your immortal part."

"I think so too," sobbed Jack, glad of a chance to lay the blame of his mischievousness upon somebody else, and determining that if he ever did become a minister, he would make things lively for Matt Bolton's father, who denied the existence of a personal devil.

"So think I," remarked the doctor, "and a very successful job Satan has made of it. I wish he would give me a few lessons in the art of getting hold of boys."

The minister thought to himself that it was not necessary for the doctor to go so far for information when he could have obtained it from present company, but as the doctor paid a large pew rent in Mr. Daybright's church, that divine thought it inadvisable to offend a person upon whom a portion of his own salary depended. But he could safely say what he chose to Jack, so he said:

"Rouse yourself, my dear young friend; you still live and move and have your being, and
'While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return,'

you know. Why not, in this unsavory place, eschew finally and forever all bad associations?"

"I will—oh, I will!" cried Jack.

"I've heard something of the sort before," remarked the doctor. "I've heard it from this young scamp himself, and, Mr. Daybright, you and I have often heard it from men who thought they were upon their death-beds."

"Blessed be death-beds, then," fervently exclaimed the minister. "Jack, why don't you determine to say, hereafter and always, 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' when wrong impulses make themselves known in your mind?"

"I have done it," said Jack, recalling his experience with the pin in the German Methodist meeting, "but it don't take him long to get around in front of me again."

The doctor hid an unseemly giggle in his handkerchief, and the minister himself was temporarily silenced; then the doctor managed to straighten out his voice, as he said:

"Listen to me, my boy. I can take you out of this vile hole, but only by subscribing a hundred dollars to the debt of the German Methodist church, repairing their broken window, giving them a new Bible, changing my custom from the market to Shantz the butcher, who doesn't sell the best of meat but does charge the highest prices, asking Bolton to raise the salary of old Nokkerman, reducing the amount of my bill to Petrus von Schlenker"—

"I didn't do anything to any of these people," interrupted Jack.

"Whether you did or not," said the doctor, "doesn't affect the case. You did something, whatever it was, to disturb that meeting; those men were all there, they are all among the complainants, and must be satisfied in order to persuade them to withdraw their complaint."

"Didn't—didn't Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel want anything?" asked Jack falteringly.

"Oh!" exclaimed the doctor, "it was you who made him sit upon that crooked pin, was it? How did you do it?"

Jack, finding himself trapped by his own words, meekly explained the operation which led to Nuderkopf's spasmodic loquacity, both visitors holding their mouths as he did so. Then the doctor resumed the disturbed line of the conversation by asking:

"What do you propose to do?"

"Oh!" said Jack, raising his head, "I'll be a minister, and preach to bad boys all my life, if you will only get me out of here, and send me off to some seminary where nobody knows me."

"Umph!" grunted the doctor. "And what sort of a living do you suppose you'll earn in that business?"

"'Quench not the Spirit,'" quoted the minister, and the doctor inwardly acknowledged the justice of the rebuke, though he hypocritically remarked that he had spoken thus only to test Jack's sincerity.

"Will you let other boys alone—keep away from them entirely?" asked the doctor.

This was severer than Jack had anticipated, even when in the depths of contrition and apprehension, so he dropped his head again, and realized anew what a dreadful thing sin was when one came to look it fairly in the face.

"Do you hear me?" asked the doctor.

"All but Matt, father," said Jack. "He never does anything wrong, unless I put him up to it, and I'll promise never to tell him any good thing again, if you'll let me go with him."

"Good thing!" ejaculated the doctor. "What sort of repentance do you call that, dominie, when outrageous capers are characterized as good things?"

The minister shook his head gravely, and answered:

"My dear young friend, you must realize that what you call good things are really bad things. Until you fully understand this, there is nothing to prevent your getting into just such trouble again."

"Then I'll call everything bad," said Jack; "blackberrying, fishing, answers to hard sums,——"

"Gently, boy," said the minister. "None of these things do harm to any one."

"I supposed they did," cried Jack, "for I like them all, and it seems as if whatever I like is bad."

"Not at all," said the minister, while the doctor hastily drew forth his notebook and made the following note for the great work on heredity: "When a person is suffering, he is liable to believe that things have always been as they are at that particular moment; hence the unhealthy poems, novels and dramas which certain disordered minds spring upon the public." Then the doctor replaced his notebook, contemplated the weeping boy for a moment or two, sat down beside him, put his arms around him, and exclaimed:

"My darling boy, I love you better than I love my life." The doctor lied terribly, as most busy people do who affirm strong, unselfish sentiments, but Jack was not in a condition just then to question the character of any one who cared to befriend him, so he hid his face in his father's breast and cried as if he could not stop. He even threw his own arms about the doctor with a mighty grip, considering how young the boy was.

"Think of your mother, too," pleaded the doctor. "She has suffered more for you than you ever can for yourself, and she is dreadfully feeble and nervous; do try to lighten the load which at best must be very heavy to her."

"I will," said Jack; "indeed I will. I'll darn all my own stockings."

"And," said the minister, who wished all things done decently and in order as established by Providence, "pray daily for grace to overcome every sin."

"I always do," said Jack, "but it don't always work."

"It never will," said the minster, "if you don't act as if your prayer was in earnest. No amount of praying will keep you out of a mud-puddle if you persist in wanting to go into it."

"Well, come along," remarked the doctor, who had consulted his watch, and remembered a patient who expected a call just then. The door opened, and the trio stepped into the hall; just then there came along a zephyr which had passed a kitchen where onions were being boiled, but for all that, Jack thought it the most delicious breeze that ever blew. The constable, who stood outside the door gave Jack a most discomposing scowl which was not entirely disconnected with remembrances of water melons; but Jack, instead of repaying the scowl in kind, which he could have done with entire success from his own incomparable collection of faces, inwardly determined that at some appropriate time he would privately apologize to the official and repay his water melon in kind. As his father and the minister turned toward the main street, Jack exhibited strong manifestations of reluctance, so both gentlemen concluded it would be only merciful to lead the boy homeward through less frequented streets. But it seemed to Jack as if the whole town had known of his impending release, and were lying in wait to look at him. Shantz the butcher drove by and glared at him; old Nokkerman, en route for supper, looked upon him reproachfully; Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, who was mixing mortar in front of a new building, contemplated him with the stony stare which is not peculiar to cockneys only, and Matt himself went by without bestowing even a friendly wink upon him.

Worst of all, as the trio passed Billy Barker's house, the nice little sister of Billy happened to step outside the door. Jack dropped his eyes ever so far, but he could not resist looking out of their extreme corners to see what she might think of him. The face which he saw contained considerable wonder, but it also expressed a sorrow which was unmixed with reprobation, and by the time that Jack reached home he was brimful of a feeling to which he had hitherto been an utter stranger. It was not love, as that sentiment is conventionally defined, for it was entirely devoid of passion and selfishness, but it is not surprising that Jack, having never heard love talked of but in one way—to wit, a strong regard for one person by another person of the opposite sex—should go home with the firm conviction that he was oceans deep in love with nice little Mattie Barker. To get a kind look from a person of whom you have never heard anything bad, a person who never scolded you, nor meddled with any of your affairs, and in whose face you can see no evidence of guile, will doubtless cause you, adult reader, to contemplate such person with earnest regard, and if you are a man and the person alluded to is of the other sex, you will hardly be able, even in the light of your past experience among humanity, to imagine any reason why she may not be an angel in human form.