The prisoner’s eyes strayed past the grating to the green hills and the pleasant gardens, where some children were playing. The sheriff did not move. There was as little sensibility in his impassive mask as in a wooden Indian’s; but behind the trained apathy was a real compassion. He was thinking. “The boy don’t look like he had a year’s life in him. I bet he knows it himself. And when he stares that way out of the window he’s thinking he ain’t never going to be foot-loose in the sun again. Kinder tough, I call it.” The young man’s eyes suddenly met his. “Well, it’s no great matter, I guess,” said he. “I’ll do it. But I can’t for the life of me make out why you are taking so much trouble.” He was surprised at Wickliff’s reply. It was, “Come on down stairs with me, and I’ll show you.” “You mean it?” “Yes; go ahead.” “You want my parole not to cut and run?” “Just as you like about that. Better not try any fooling.” The prisoner uttered a short laugh, glancing from his own puny limbs to the magnificent muscles of the officer. “Straight ahead, after you’re out of the corridor, down-stairs, and turn to the right,” said Wickliff. Silently the prisoner followed his directions, and when they had descended the stairs and turned to the right, the sheriff’s hand pushed beneath his elbow and opened the door before them. “My rooms,” said Wickliff. “Being a single man, it’s handier for me living in the jail.” The rooms were furnished with the unchastened gorgeousness of a Pullman sleeper, the brilliant hues of a Brussels carpet on the floor, blue plush at the windows and on the chairs. The walls were hung with the most expensive gilt paper that the town could furnish (after all, it was a modest price per roll), and against the gold, photographs of the district judges assumed a sinister dignity. There was also a photograph of the court-house, and one of the jail, and a model in bas-relief of the Capitol at Des Moines; but more prominent than any of these were two portraits opposite the windows. They were oil-paintings, elaborately framed, and they had cost so much that the sheriff rested happily content that they must be well painted. Certainly the artist had not recorded impressions; rather he seemed to have worked with a microscope, not slighting an eyelash. One of the portraits was that of a stiff and stern young man in a soldier’s uniform. He was dark, and had eyes and features like the sheriff. The other was the portrait of a young girl. In the original daguerreotype from which the artist worked the face was comely, if not pretty, and the innocence in the eyes and the timid smile made it winning. The artist had enlarged the eyes and made the mouth smaller, and bestowed (with the most amiable intentions) a complexion of hectic brilliancy; but there still remained, in spite of paint, a flicker of the old touching expression. Between the two canvases hung a framed letter. It was labelled in bold Roman script, “Letter of Capt. R. T.