"As any other total stranger claiming every citizen's right of petition, I reluctantly intrude upon your leisure, and I appeal to you as a man, as a gentleman, as the highest official of my State, to grant some mercy to a doomed criminal. For humanity's sake--oh, Governor Armitage, for the sake of a ruined and helpless family, I ask--I beg--that you will pardon Ronald Clinton and save two women from insanity! Be merciful; oh, be merciful, as every Governor can be if he so wills." He watched her steadily, and once he drew a long, deep breath as if sorely oppressed; but her anxiously searching gaze discovered no relaxation. She suddenly leaned forward, and her exquisitely curved lips quivered: "You will not deny my prayer! You will pardon Ronald?" Slowly he shook his head. "Miss Lindsay, I shall never pardon him. At all costs I must be absolutely just." "You will not spare his life? when your office empowers you to set him free? You cruelly elect to order his wife widowed, and his babes disgraced!" "Should I forget the widow and fatherless little ones of Norman Hewitt whom Ronald Clinton deliberately and brutally murdered? The wrongs of the dead are too often buried with him, and sickly sympathy--posing as philanthropic Christian clemency--is lavished on branded Cains set free to defy human and divine law, and repeat crimes that should have forfeited their blackened lives." "Your Excellency's standard of justice is more righteous than that of Abel's God, Who instead of slaying his murderer granted him long life in which to purify his guilty soul and mend his ways!" "Disclaiming any approach to irreverence, permit me to remind you that the experiment of pardon was not repeated; and the severest penal code ever compiled came directly from the Divine lawgiver, whose chosen people demanded 'a life for a life.'" "Hanging poor Amy's husband could not compensate Mrs. Hewitt for the loss of hers. The exaction of blood tax is a legal survival of savagery. Justice is not the sole divine attribute--mercy is coordinate. Try to remember that Talmudic prayer of Jehovah: 'Be it my will that my mercy overpower my justice!' As Governor, the issue of life or death lies in the hollow of your hand, and for the last time I beg of you not to listen to the barbarous prompting of a cruel revenge. Think of the awful responsibility of hurling an unprepared soul into eternity. Think of the blessed relief that only you can give to tortured, despairing human hearts who can look to no one but you for succor."