“Well, I didn’t mean to gossip with you so much, but I thought maybe you would like to know something about it and so long as the alderman sent you over I wanted to do all I could for you. Give my respects to the alderman. I guess he’ll be a candidate next spring. He says he won’t, but I think he will. He always knows what he’s doing. All he wants is to throw them reform guys off the track. They might know that they couldn’t beat him. Our people out there don’t care anything about municipal ownership and Civil Service Reform, and things like that. What they want is turkeys on Thanksgiving and to be helped out of the lock-up and pardoned out of the Bridewell and found jobs. That’s what they want, and there ain’t an alderman in town that tends to the business of his ward better than ours, and we don’t care whether the railroads and gas companies give him money or not. We don’t expect him to work for nothin’ and don’t want him to; and what do we care about the streets? None of us has horses and the fellows that wants ‘em ought to pay for ‘em. Well, here’s Jackson, and I’ll tell the guard to let you stay with him all you want to; he’s a good fellow and will do what I want. You can say anything you please to Jackson and he can talk to you all he wants to; the guard won’t listen if he knows you’re all right, but it isn’t any more than fair, anyhow, for this is his last night.” Hank listened to the guard without being impatient for, in the first place, he felt as if he had made a new friend, and he liked him; he was such a good talker and told him so much that was new and he didn’t seem the least bit stuck up, although he had such a good job. Then all the time he felt nervous and uneasy about meeting Jackson; the Jackson he knew was not a criminal but a good fellow who used to play pool and drink beer and go to primaries, while this man was a murderer who was to be hung next day; then again he didn’t seem a real man, but a sort of ghost, so that Hank had a good deal the feeling he used to know as a child when he went past a graveyard, or that he felt in a morgue, or when he went to look at some dead friend. When he came up to the cell Jackson was smoking a cigar and talking with the guard. At the first glance the uneasy feeling passed away. It was the same Jim Jackson that he knew, except thinner and paler than when he saw him last. Before the guard had time to speak Jackson reached out his hand, smiled and said “Hello, Hank, I’m awful glad you came. I’ve been looking for you all the afternoon.” Hank took his hand without the least feeling that it was the hand of a murderer. It was only the old friend and comrade he had known. The guard unlocked the door and told Hank to go in. Then he said: “Now, you folks talk all you want to. I won’t hear a single word you say. I’ll sit out here and if there is anything I can do, let me know.”