Before the law I stand a confessed criminal; before God I am only a weak man trying to do good toward my fellow man. I am guilty of helping a convicted man escape the clutches of man-made law. I couldn’t help it. The love I bear humanity welled up, when the young man told his story, and flooded my reason with the sunshine of sympathy; and I helped him get away. Early one morning I went to my wood shed to get kindling to build the kitchen fire. In the dim light I thought I saw a man crouching in one corner. A second look convinced me that it was true—there was a man crouching there. At first I was frightened, and thought of flight. It’s the first impulse that comes over me at sight of possible danger. And a strange man, in a strange place for that man to be, is danger enough to startle even a brave man, like my wife, for instance. But on looking closer, and catching a full glance of the startled eyes, that looked up to me in fear and wild, beseeching hunger for something his heart yearned for, I changed my mind. Fear gave way to curiosity and sympathy. I said, “Good morning, brother—can I do anything for you this morning?” At the sound of friendly words he stood up, and I recognized in him the young man who was tried and found guilty of forgery, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. “I’ve escaped from jail, you see,” he said with a quiver in his voice, while his boyish blue eyes looked away down into my soul (if I still had it with me). “So I see,” I replied. “And now, what are you going to do?” “You heard me telling my story on the witness stand last week, didn’t you?” I nodded in the affirmative, and he went on. “Well, nobody believed me. They thought I was lying to save myself from prison. I told the court that in my confession, when first arrested and sent to jail, I had plead guilty to the charge of forgery, to save another man, because the father of that other man promised to get me out of prison if I would assume the crime and save the honor of his family. “Before God that story is true. But the family I was bribed to save has no honor. From the moment that confession was wheedled out of me, I was forsaken, and left to the mercy of a jury whom I could not convince that I was innocent. Not one amongst them would believe that I had honor enough in my soul to assume the crime of another, because I am a cobbler’s son. Neither could I convince them that the rich merchant on B—d street had played false to me. “I do not blame them. I could not believe it of that merchant myself, were I not the victim of his perfidy.