“There ain’t anyone ‘specially that I’ve got to worry about, ‘cept the boy. Of course it’s awful hard for a poor feller to start, anyhow, unless he’s real smart, and I don’t know how ‘twill be with the boy. We always thought he was awful cunnin’; but I s’pose most parents does. But I don’t see how he’d ever be very smart, ‘cause I wa’n’t and neither was his mother. As I was sayin’, ‘twould be awful hard for him anyhow, but now when he’s growed up, and anyone tells him about how his mother was murdered by his father, and how his father got hung for it, and they show him the pictures in the paper and all that, I don’t see how he’ll ever have any show. It seems as if the state had ought to do somethin’ for a child when the state kills its father that way, but it don’t unless they sends him to a poor house, or something like that. “Now, I haven’t told you a single lie—and you can see how it all was, and that I wa’n’t so awful bad, and that I’m sorry, and would be willin’ to die if it would bring her back. And if you can, I wish you’d just kind of keep your eye on the boy. I guess it’ll be a good deal better to change his name and not let him nor anyone else know anything about either of us. A good many poor people grow up that way. I don’t really know nothin’ ‘bout my folks. They might’ve been hung too, for all I know. But you kind of watch the boy and keep track of him, and if he comes up all right and seems to be a smart feller and looks at things right, and he gets to wonderin’ about me, and you think ‘twill do any good you can tell him just what you feel a mind to, but don’t tell him ‘less’n you think it will do him good. Of course, I can’t never pay you in any way for what you’ve done for me, but mebbe you’ll think it’s worth while for a feller that hain’t a friend in the world, and who’s got to be hung so quick.” Hank struggled as hard as he could to keep back the tears. He was not much used to crying, but in spite of all his efforts they rolled down his face. “Well, Jim, old feller,” he said. “I didn’t know how it was—when I come I felt as if you’d been awful bad, and of course I know it wa’n’t right, but somehow I know it might have happened to me, or ‘most anybody, almost, and that you ain’t so bad. I can’t tell you anything about how I feel, but I’m glad I come. It’s done me good. I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same about the fellers that go to jail and get hung. I don’t know’s they could help it any more’n any of us can help the things we do. Anyhow, I sha’n’t never let the boy out of my mind a single minit, and I’ll do as much for him as if he was mine. I’ll look him up the first thing I do. I don’t know about changin’ his name, I’ll see. Anyhow, if he ever gets to hear a bit of it, I’ll see he knows how it was.”