"No mercy from you! I might as well pray to that growling sea yonder, watching hungrily for the next drowning wretch. I knew mine was a fool's errand, yet pity conquered repugnance, and it seemed so incredible, so monstrous that any man could coolly point to the gallows as sole answer to the heart-rending petition of an almost frantic family." He pressed a hand over his brow, pushed back the thick, close-cut black hair, and after a moment he answered in an altered tone of profound and tender regret: "My fellow monster, the sea, is spared after-pangs that are my portion. Do you imagine that any argument could avail to change my convictions of official duty, when in a fiery ordeal I felt compelled to deny the wailing wife who brought her pretty little ones to cry in their father's behalf? Try to realize what must have been the feelings of a man not wholly petrified, when he lifted from his office floor the kneeling form of an aged, white-haired woman who could only gasp between sobs: 'As you hope for mercy when your naked soul fronts God on His judgment seat, spare my son's life! Remember the mother who cradled you in her arms--for her sake, for God's sake, be merciful to me--save my boy from the gallows.' Miss Lindsay, the terrible curse is that the wages of sin are paid too often to the helpless innocent. I could not pardon Ronald Clinton, whose crime was deliberately planned murder, but learning of illness in his family, I sent a telegram at four o'clock to-day staying the execution of his sentence until restoration to health permits his mother and wife to spend a day with him in prison. Sometimes when I long for rest, the vision of those heart-broken women and two lovely children clinging to my knees, robs me of sleep." "You spared him only long enough to say good-bye to those who, if possible, would die to save him! Is that deemed a mercy--or refinement of cruelty? Your telegram was sent at four o'clock? If news of the reprieve had only arrived before I left my house, this needless journey would have been averted; I should have been spared this keen humiliation on the eve of quitting a country I shall probably see no more." From a silvered sea rose the metrical rippling of waves crooning a "_berceuse_" to drowsy lands cradled by foam-laced surf. For a moment silence had followed the woman's words, and in that brief pause Governor Armitage's luminous, watchful eyes noted a swift and subtle change. The face whitened, hardened to its usual rigid coldness; all trace of emotion vanished as utterly as the light from an extinguished lamp in some lovely transparent globe, and the strained expression of her unflinching eyes gave place to one of baffling, inflexible quietude; the habitual mask temporarily loosened, was readjusted. When she spoke her clear, even tone showed no hint of cadence that had sunk it to passionate protest.