Part 56 (2/2)

A NEW PLAN OF ESCAPE

I

My new neighbor turns ” Tom, returned after several years of absence By ” notes to each other at night, and Tom startles me by the confession that he was the author of the mysterious note I had received soon afterplanned, he informs me, and I was to be ”let in,” by his reco ”cold feet,” the plot was betrayed to the Warden, whereupon Tom ”sent the snitch to the hospital” As a result, however, he was kept in solitary till his release In the prison he had become proficient as a broom-maker, and it was his intention to follow the trade There was nothing in the crooked line, he thought; and he resolved to be honest

But on the day of his discharge he was arrested at the gate by officers froainst assistant Deputy Hopkins, before whom he had once accidentally let drop the remark that he would never return to Illinois, because he anted” there

He lived the five years in the Joliet prison in the sole hope of ”getting square” with the man who had so meanly betrayed hih, deterht of his arrival he broke into the latter's residence, prepared to avenge his wrongs But the assistant Deputy had left the previous day on his vacation Furious at being baffled, Toht of his match fell upon a silver trinket on the bureau of the bedroom It fascinated him He could not take his eyes off it Suddenly he was seized with the desire to examine the contents of the house The old passion was upon hiathered the silverware into a tablecloth, and quietly stole out of the house He was arrested the next day, as he was trying to pawn his booty An old offender, he received a sentence of ten years Since his arrival, eight o, he has been kept in solitary His health is broken; he has no hope of surviving his sentence But if he is to die--he swears--he is going to take ”his hting” Tom, I realize that the safety of the hated officer is conditioned by Toe I feel little sy out the secrets of prisoners has placed hiency; but I exert myself to persuade Tom that it would be sheer insanity thus deliberately to put his head in the noose He is still a younghis life for a sneak of a guard

However, Touthen his resolution But closer acquaintance reveals toconceit over his art and technic, as a second-story expert I play upon his vanity, scoffing at the crudity of his plans of revenge Would it not be un,” I argue, to ”do the job” in a ”smoother”

rows more interested Presently, with unexpected enthusiasestion of ”a break” Once outside, well--”I'll get 'iht,”

he chuckles

II

The plan of escape cohts we take turns in tiht Captain, the opening of the rotunda door Nunificant, yet potentially fatal, are to be mastered Many obstacles bar the way of success, but tihly engrossed with the project I realize the desperation of the undertaking, but the sole alternative is slow death in the solitary It is the last resort

With ut past; the dense fogs of the season will aid our escape We hasten to coreat nervous tension with the excite upon a definite date But Tom's state of mind fills me with apprehension He has becoluain I knock on the wall, calling for a reply to roan issues fronals reht, in the hope of inducing a guard to investigate the cause of the groaning But nored The nextI behold Tom carried on a stretcher from his cell, and learn with horror that he had bled to death during the night

III

The peculiar death of my friend preys on my mind Was it suicide or accident? To confinement; in so for lack of medical aid It is hardly probable that he would commit suicide on the eve of our attenored at the tinificance He was apparently under the delusion that Hopkins was ”after him” Once or twice ht be poisoned, he hinted I had laughed the matter away, familiar with the sporadic delusions of men in solitary Close confinement exerts a similar effect upon the majority of prisoners So Sid used to manifest every symptom of the diseases he read about Perhaps poor Tom's delusion was responsible for his death Spencer, too, had committed suicide a month before his release, in the fire It may be that in a sudden fit of despondency, Tom had ended his life Perhaps I could have saved my friend: I did not realize how constantly he brooded over the danger he believed higle thaton in his tortured heart! Yet ere so inti and eht of Tom possesses my mind The news fro of Italy rouses little interest in ed the peasants and the wo bread He did well, and the agitation resulting fro on my fate The last hope of escape has departed with my poor friend I am doomed to perish here And Bresci will perish in prison, but the coize hienerate the world Yet I feel that the individual, in certain cases, is of more direct and immediate consequence than huate of individual existences--and shall these, the best of them, forever be sacrificed for the metaphysical collectivity? Here, all around me, a thousand unfortunates daily suffer the torture of Calvary, forsaken by God and le and suicide, with the desperate cry for a little sunshi+ne and life How shall they be helped? How helped amid the injustice and brutality of a society whose chief monuments are prisons?

And so we must suffer and suicide, and countless others after us, till the play of social forces shall transform human history into the history of true hu, dreary road

Bereft of the last hope of freedorow indifferent to life The monotony of the narrow cell daily becos for rest Rest, no more to awaken The world will not miss me An ato will pursue its wonted course, but I shall know no le and strife My friends will sorrow, and yet be glad my pain is over, and continue on their way And new Brescis will arise, and o enerations will be born and die, and humanity and the world be whirled into space and disappear, and again the little stage will be set, and the sas of cosnificant it all is in the eye of reason, how small and puny life and all its pain and travail! With eyes closed, I behold myself suspended by the neck froainst the door, striking it softly, once, twice,--just like Pasquale, when he hanged hio A feitches, and the last breath is gone My face grows livid, uard passes ”What's this, eh?” He rings the rotunda bell Keys clang; the lever is drawn, and my door unlocked An officer draws a knife sharply across the rope at the bars: ainst the iron bedstead The doctor kneels at my side; I feel his hand over my heart

Now he rises