“You remember about my boy. Now of course I always was a rough fellow and never did quite right ever before that, but still I guess you know I always loved that kid. Strange thing, he’ll be four years old tomorrow on the very day—well, poor little fellow, I hope he don’t know nothing about it. You remember the time that kid had the croup and how we thought he couldn’t get well, and you know I went down to the yard to tell you about it and how bad I felt. I almost wish now he’d died, but maybe that’s wicked and God will take care of the kid better’n he did of me. Well, I haven’t heard a word about that boy since I came to the jail, or since I left him at the house that night, except a little bit in court and what that good guard says. He kind of holds out that he’s in some kind of an orphan asylum where he’s gettin’ plenty to eat and where he’ll learn what’s right and wrong, and be a good man, and that’s all right, but I’d like to know where the kid is. He says if I thought so much of him I ought to have showed it before, and I s’pose I ought; but I did think lots of him; just as much as them rich folks think of their boys. I want him to be taken care of and to be educated and grow up to be a good man, and maybe it’s a good deal better if he never knows anything about his father, but somehow I can’t help wantin’ him to know who I was and don’t want him to think of me just like the newspapers and everybody else does. I wouldn’t want him to grow up like that guard, even if he is real good. And you see there wa’n’t any one but you that I could send for and tell them just how it all happened. No one yet has ever known how it was, and everybody says I was to blame and that I’m a demon and a monster, and I thought maybe if I explained the whole thing to you, just as it was, you could see that I wa’n’t so much to blame; anyhow that there was some excuse for what I done, and then some time when the boy’s growed up he’d know that I wa’n’t so bad as everyone says I was.