Lifted Masks

ies, and an anticipatory moving of chairs among the Senators. In the press gallery the reporters bunched together their scattered papers and inspected their pencil-points with earnestness. Dorman

of the great laws of the universe that every living thing be given a chance. In the case before us that law has been violat

e whole affair. He hoped that one way or other they would finish it up that night, and go ahead with something else. He had done what he could, and now the responsibility was with the rest of them. He thought they were shouldering a great deal to advoca

to think he was looking far beyond the present and the specific and acting as guardian of the future-and the whole. In summing it up that night the reporters would tell in highly wrought fashion of the moving appeal made by Senator Dorman,

ing to him in the world. He supposed it was as a sociological and psychological experiment. Senator Dorman had promised the Governor to assume guardianship of the boy if he were let out. The Senator fr

with it already. It is said to have been the most awful crime ever committed in the State. I gra

n Alfred was three months old. From the time he was a mere baby she taught him to hate his father. Everything that went wrong with him

me for him; he did not even explain-he merely went away and left him. At the age of seven the boy was turned out on the world, after having been taught one thing-to hate his father. He stayed a few da

his father was. They told him, and he started to walk-a distance of fifty miles. I ask you to bear in mind, gentlemen, that he was only

other children, and he had no place for Alfred. He turned him away; but the neighbours protested, and he was compelled t

ating her son, by encouraging his wife to abuse him, and inspiring the other children to despise him. It seems

mother about spilling the milk. He went, as usual, to his bed in the barn; but the hay was suffocating, his head ached, a

d to the house for the perpetration of the awful crime. I do not even affirm it would not have happened had there been some human being there to lay a cooling hand on his hot forehead, and say a few soothing, loving words to t

as stronger than he had anticipated-more logic and less empty exhortation. He was telling of the boy's life in reformatory and penitentiary since the commission of the crime,-of how he had expanded under kindness, of his mental attainments, the letters he co

thered him to forget names. Then he was wondering why it was the philosophers had not more to say about the incongruity of people who had never had any trouble of their own sitting in judgment u

dea of murder would have grown in Alfred Williams's heart had he been born to the things to which Charles Harrison was born, and whether it would have come within the range of possibility for Charles Harrison to murder his father if he had been born to Alfred Williams's lot. Putting it that way,

in the morning, charge him with the moral discernment which is the first condition of moral responsibility? If Alfred Williams's story were this boy's story, would you deplore that there had been no one to check the childish passion, or would you say it was the inborn instinct of the murderer? And suppose again this were Alfred William

happened if the world had turned upon him as it had upon Alfred Williams. At eleven his greatest grievance was that the boys at school called him "yellow-top." He remembered throwing a rock at one of them for doing it. He wondered if it was criminal instinct prompted the thro

imming, nor to a ball game, or maybe never to a circus. It might even be that he had never owned a dog. The Senator from Maxwell was right whe

night, it was denied them. And there, at the penitentiary, they could not even look up at the stars. It had been years since Alfred Williams raised his face to God's heaven and knew he was part of it all. The voices of the night could not penetrate the little cell in the heart of the mammoth stone building where he spent his evenings

n the crucial hour there had been no one to say a staying word. Man had cheated him of the things that were man

d what the Senator from Maxwell called "his chance." If Johnson County carried the day, there would be something unpleasant for him to consider all the remainder of his life. As he grew to be an ol

unty," he was saying, "I can stand before you today and say that after an unsparing investigation of this case I d

t the penitentiary knew the Senate was considering his case that afternoon. It was without vanity he wondered whether what he had been t

s followed almost in alternation. After a long minut

30; Noe

thful a servant of his constituents. The bo

of the Senators began the perusal of the previous day's Journal with elaborate interest. Senator Dorman indulged in none of these feints. A full look at his face jus

he comings and goings of the sun. He would never look at them-feel them-again without remembering he was keeping one of his fellow creatures away from them. He wondered at his own presumption in denying any living thing pa

d stars were wailing out protest for the boy who wanted to know them better. And yet it was not sun, moon, and stars so much as the unused swimming h

s seeming to say it would have been in better

his collar and looking straight ahead

tion that fall, and Harrison was in the race. Those eight words meant to a surety he would not go to Washington, for the Senator from Maxwell had chosen the right word when he referred to the prejudice of Johnson County on th

ike resentment. When the tumult at last subsided, and he saw that he was exp

was Senator Harrison's chance to say something worth putting into a pan

e-growing more and more red. "I-I think," he finally jerked out, "that som

l minutes for him to rise again, but he at last turned his chair around and looked out at the green things on the State-house groun

from Johnson; but his face had grown cold, and as they were usually afraid of him, anyhow, they kept away. All but Senator Dorman-it m

ntly. "You think it 'fine,'" he asked,

man. "Well, that's scarcel

"it was a clear case of cowardice. You see," he laughe

stituency would see it, and it humiliated him. They would say he had not the courage of his convictions, that he

ne who leaned to the softer side. There were the trees-they were permitted another chance to bud; there were the birds-they were allowed ano