CHAPTER VIPERSECUTION
I awoke the next morning, with a start, from a night of interrupted slumber. The closing hours of the trial and the escape of Shinburn had command of my brain till it was a relief to open my eyes and become conscious of my surroundings. As I thought of Shinburn away from the horror of the jail, I will not attempt to deny that I had a sense of gladness for him. I had seen considerable of this man in jail, and I had to confess to myself that he possessed the rare faculty of winning the friendship of almost any one. He had won mine as the fictitious deputy marshal, and knowing him at length as the bank burglar, I could not do else but like him. His whole-souled, generous nature shone through his criminal craft, until at times I found myself wondering if he really were a felon,—wondering if I were not in a dream. When this mood was dissolved, and I realized that he was a criminal of exceptional cunning,—all he’d been proved at the trial,—I asked myself what it was that had sent him on to the commission of crime. At times, when I would hear hissoft, gracious voice, look in his kindly blue eyes, and admire his genial smile, it was not difficult to fancy him standing in a pulpit, preaching the word of God. But I am digressing too much.
These thoughts gave way to the more important matter of getting bail. Now that the jury had disagreed, my counsel applied for my release, believing that only nominal bail would be required; but imagine their astonishment when Judge Doe announced he’d increased it to twenty thousand dollars. This was as outrageous as it was unexpected, in view of the issue of the trial. Had I not been declared innocent, practically, by some of the jurymen? Was not their action sufficient in itself to warrant the authorities, on the moral ground, if on no other, in giving me the benefit of the doubt, so far as bail was concerned? My counsel were up and doing, unsparing of words in protesting against the injustice, proceeding almost to the point of offending Judge Doe. And my loyal friends again came to the rescue. Speedily setting about, they subscribed the new bail, and in a few days my release was once more applied for. To our consternation this sum was declared to be insufficient, and when an explanation was demanded of Judge Doe, he answered by increasing the bond to forty thousand dollars.
“And if that is offered,” he declared coldly, “I’ll make it eighty thousand dollars!”
Here was persecution absolute. His decision wasa flat refusal to accord the right guaranteed me by the constitution,—the right of admission to bail, charged as I was with a felony only. A constitutional guaranty had been swept away like so much waste paper. My trial had been a travesty on justice, and then to crown that, I was being persecuted, was hopelessly bound in the toils of a relentless, powerful enemy, it seemed. I must remain in jail to await another trial—bear the agony longer—helpless, because a certain influential man had schemed to drag my wealth from me to reimburse himself and others. As to getting my wealth, that, indeed, had been accomplished. My business had been seized and sold, and I was penniless and dependent. What more did they want? Would the human vultures not be satisfied until my body had been thrust in a prison cell and kept there for years—until torture had devoured it? Was there, I cried out to God, no limit to the persecution of an innocent man? Where was that boasted justice, that love and that piety of the Puritans? Had mammon ridden roughshod over and crushed out those high ideals of old New Hampshire? I found no answer, not even an echo of my words from the four bleak walls of my prison-house.
As the weeks wore on and there was no relief, the evil that persisted in forcing itself upon me, from time to time, and which I had as often conquered, came back again with still greater force. Madereckless to the danger point by the power of my wrongs, I fostered the evil thoughts until they were almost my ruling passion. I swore one day I would no longer willingly submit to such inhuman treatment; that I would be a law unto myself, and that I would accept the consequences, be what they might.
The dreary autumn days had merged into winter when the decision to break out of jail became an accepted thought. Day and night I meditated over a plot that would make freedom from my cell certain. My friends, aroused over the injustice heaped upon me, were only too willing, at last, to lend their aid. All the tools, clothing, and money needed would be forthcoming at the proper time, and I believed that God would forgive any one who would brave a violation of the law to succor an unfortunate one like me.
At last I completed a plan, and when February came I had secreted in my cell the saws, files, and other implements necessary to cut my way to freedom. In the cell with me at that time was a young burglar named Woods, whom I did not much trust, but felt obliged to include in my plans. He, naturally, was willing, and from then on we labored together in one common interest.
It looked like a hopeless job at the beginning, barred and triple barred as the cell window was. There were two sets of inner iron bars in trellis work, and attached to the set nearest to the windowsash by four iron rods in sockets was yet an outer trellis. The only way to get through this network of bars was to cut an opening in the two inner trellises, large enough to admit the passage of our bodies, and sever the inner ends of the four rods supporting the outer trellis. This done, the outside trellis could be pried off, when it would drop in the jail yard. But all this necessitated sawing twenty-seven square inches of iron—a tremendous undertaking, as can be readily understood. However, I was determined to succeed, even to the surmounting of greater difficulties.
I decided that the sawing must be done in the daytime, else the rasping of the saw would attract the attention of some one in the jail. Besides, Sheriff Aldrich, who had succeeded Jailer Wilder after Shinburn’s escape, slept in an apartment on the floor below, and not any too far away for our purpose. By daylight we could work fairly well by dodging people passing in front of the jail and those who occasionally came in the corridor leading to the cell. From the inside was where we must expect the most interference. Believing that I could best throw off suspicion, in case any one came near while we were busy, I had Woods do the sawing. The points most pregnable were pointed out, and we began. At once it became a most difficult and tedious job. The weather was frigid, and when we weren’t shivering with apprehension lestwe be discovered, we were being badly nipped by Jack Frost. Very frequently people passed in the road, or Jailer Aldrich came in the corridor, or there was danger of our work attracting the attention of some one of the prisoners below. There were days when we accomplished scarcely anything, owing to the almost incessant interference; while on other days we made hopeful advancement. Finally, after two weeks of work and worry, we had cut, all but the shreds, an aperture in the inner trellises, sufficiently large, we believed, through which we could crawl. The shreds we would cut the afternoon before we made the exit. The four bars holding the outside trellis had been similarly treated. Then, having been provided with what we needed to make the journey, we set the following midnight as the hour for our surreptitious exit. The next evening, after supper, we finished the opening in the bars and prepared for the vital moment. We had a stout piece of wood in the cell to use as a lever for prying off the outside trellis, and at midnight, all being ready, I proceeded. Despite my greatest effort, the lever would not move the trellis, and when Woods added his weight, there was no better success. I was shocked and disappointed. It seemed that we had not sawed near enough to the severing point, so far as the four rods supporting the outer trellis were concerned. I had feared that the thing would fall off before we were ready and spoil our escape. Thestick seemed too short to furnish the leverage needed. I looked about for something better, feeling satisfied I wouldn’t find it in the cell. Suddenly it flashed across me that I could use a part of the iron bedstead, and I cut off one of its legs, and we went at the work again like madmen, as time was fast leaving us in a sore predicament. Even the new lever didn’t avail us anything further than to show me that we had made the opening in the inner trellises too small. We were confronting a critical situation indeed.
It would soon be daylight, and the jailer would call with our morning meal; and if the aperture in the grating was not filled, we could not expect anything but discovery.
“What can we do, White?” asked young Woods, pale-faced. It was bad enough, he thought, to be in jail for burglary without facing a charge of attempting to escape from it.
I recalled we had cosmetic. Perhaps the iron-work could be kept in place with it until we could get something better. I put the patches of grating back in their places and filled the crevices with the cosmetic. It didn’t seem to me they would stay in. Any vibration, I thought, might tumble them out.
“It’s the best we can do, Woods,” I said, not cheerfully; “and as to that lame bed, we’ll have to be mighty careful it doesn’t betray us. We’llsee that it is carefully made,—no one can do that job so well this morning as one of us.”
“I’ll be the chambermaid,” Woods said, with a laugh that had a false ring in it.
“By cracky, how my back hurts!” I said, with a groan, as I doubled forward and hobbled about the cell. “I never had such a peculiar pain in my life.”
“Must have caught it from the open window,” suggested the young man. “Hope it won’t make you sick. Better get a porous plaster from Aldrich. Mother allers uses ’em.”
“The ordinary kind won’t cure my pain, lad,” I answered, with a laugh and straightening up; “I’ve got to have some pitch—the real pine. Nothing else will relieve me.”
Woods looked mystified.
“Wait,” said I.
When Jailer Aldrich brought in breakfast, he was sorry to see me in such “rheumatiz” distress, and I had little difficulty in inducing him to fetch me a quantity of pitch with which to make a “home-made” porous plaster. It was to be differently applied than he dreamed. It was not difficult to obtain the pitch, because Aldrich usually supplied the prisoners with any necessities.
With it I patched up the grating so that it would stand inspection at long distance, though a casual examination close by would have meant instantexposure. However, that day we began to make the opening in the inner trellises five inches larger. On the third day we received a fright that caused me to tremble for an hour afterward and wonder how it all turned out so well for us. High-sheriff George Holbrook and two visitors came unexpectedly upon us, despite my precaution. It was with great difficulty that we assumed our normal conditions. Any other time I would have been glad to see them, but now it was simply, it seemed to me, like playing tag with discovery. Holbrook must not be allowed to get near the window or all would be over. I never was too much of a talker. I had often declared I would never make a book agent or an insurance solicitor, but how I did chatter away at them. I said anything, nothing, talked of all subjects I could think of, until it seemed I must have driven them away in disgust. Indeed, they were about to depart when the sheriff moved toward the window.
“Holbrook!” I cried, in sheer desperation. “Here—see this!” and caught up a law book Don Woodward, one of my counsel, had loaned me. I don’t know what I said or read and I don’t care, for it did the trick. Holbrook and the visitors a moment or two later had gone. Woods was near the window, trembling. I sat down and wiped the clammy sweat from my brow. My heart was beating sluggishly; and for a few minutes my vision was dazed and I could see naught but dancing sparkslike little stars. I came mighty close to swooning.
“We’ve got to get out of this to-night, Woods,” I said, on recovering. “It won’t do to spend another day here under these conditions.”
And we went to work again and at dark had finished the sawing, practically. Five minutes more of that kind of work would suffice.
Clothed, a rope of blankets ready, and in every way fitted for our journey, we waited for midnight. I well remember the weather—severely cold and plenty of snow on the ground. We were to race for the farm-house of Woods’s father, two miles out of Keene. There, without Mr. Woods’s permission, we were to get a horse and sleigh.
At last the hour came, and with the bed leg for a lever I pried at the outer trellis. Thank goodness, this time it moved, and I shoved it outward, expecting it to fall to the ground. Fate was with us—instead, one of the shreds of iron tenaciously hung fast and answered as a hinge. The two hundred and fifty pounds of iron swung back almost noiselessly against the masonry and remained there. Had it fallen, the crash, notwithstanding the snow, might have aroused Jailer Aldrich, sleeping not far away. The rest of the journey toterra firmawas not difficult. With blankets tied end to end, we let ourselves down to the ground, and, scaling the stone wall, quit the jail at one o’clock in themorning. We found it pretty hard plodding through the snow. Getting to Woods’s barn, we stealthily as possible hitched up the horse, but not without some trouble with the family watch-dog. However, Woods succeeded in quieting him, and, getting off with no further discovery, we were soon driving at a fast pace through Surrey, past Walpole, and toward Bellows Falls. When near the bridge over the Connecticut River we passed a noisy sleighing party, among whom I recognized, by his voice, Sheriff Stebbins of Charlestown, Sullivan County. We kept our heads well down in our coats and felt glad when we’d got by without being discovered. Several years after that I saw Sheriff Stebbins at Charlestown under rather peculiar circumstances.
We encountered nothing unpleasant in the six miles drive from Bellows Falls to Saxton’s River, where lived a fine old uncle of mine. He and my aunt had a comfortable place on the outskirts of the village, and although they knew we were fugitives, they made us welcome. My aunt prepared a nice breakfast while I sent Woods to the village with his father’s rig, instructing him to leave it there to be returned and gave him money to pay for the hire of another. He came back, and after breakfast we resumed our journey toward Londonderry. It was my plan to drive over the Green Mountains into New York State, and, getting rid of the team, to strike out for a large city, probably New York.Woods had a cousin in Londonderry, where he said we could get some food for ourselves and fodder for the horse, after which the next point to be made would be Salem, just over the Vermont border in New York. This we did to a dot. I, being ready to continue the journey from Salem by rail, directed Woods to drive the team from there eastward twelve miles to a village, where he was to put it in charge of the stage driver who journeyed regularly to Saxton’s River. Thus the liveryman would get back his property in the good condition we found it. Woods was to make Troy or any other place he saw fit.
By rail from Salem to Troy, thence to New York, was a matter of only a few hours, and as I whirled along I had ample time to meditate over my lot; but the more I thought of what I had gone through, the more I seemed to be forced down to by-paths into which I had never dreamt of setting foot. After a time I compelled myself by sheer force to think of other things—what I would do, whether I would go farther west or remain in New York, and whether it would be wise to immediately ask for employment in some big dry-goods store there. I knew I could do passably well as a clerk in that line, for the experience in my father’s store and in my own later would stand me in hand.
At Albany I managed to get a newspaper, but saw nothing in it about my escape. A few hours later I was in New York. It was a dreary day, but afterall there was a sense of freedom about me. I was no longer in a grewsome cell at Keene. I was away from those months of horror. Reflecting over what I had done, I felt certain that a reward would be offered for my capture. In plain terms I realized that I was a fugitive from justice. As the word “justice” came to me I seemed to fill up with hatred. What a travesty my experience had proved the word to be. I shuddered at the possession of such thoughts, for hitherto I had been a firm believer in the righteous adjustment of all things; had been a sincere believer in the law. Again I stifled these ugly feelings that surged up within me.
Starting out for lodgings, I soon found them and sat down to lay out my plans. Again despite all my best efforts to the contrary, the terrible experiences dating from the second day of June would come to the fore, and I seemed to hear evil voices urging me to forsake all that was good and plunge into the swift-flowing current of vice. But, as on other occasions when I’d battled with evil, I could see the faces of my father and mother looming up in this train of thought, like a shaft of silver light athwart a threatening cloud, and I could hear, it seemed, the earnest solicitation of my loyal friends to be courageous though the worst come, and that they would stand by me until the last. When these good thoughts gained the ascendency, again I resolved to profit by it, and straightway set about toseek honest employment in which I could make a fresh start, endeavor to fight down my persecutors, and rebuild my fortune.
I found a clerkship in A. T. Stewart & Company’s retail dry-goods house after some effort, and though the wage was small and the prospects of an advancement were not encouraging, I began once more to take on a little hope. I succeeded in communicating with my friends at home in good time, but obtained precious little encouraging information. A reward of a thousand dollars had been posted throughout the country for my apprehension, and it was with a feeling that only a man can know who has experienced woes like mine that I read the description of the desperate bank burglar, George White, and of his midnight escape from jail along with another burglar.
The first knowledge in the jail of our escape came from a citizen passing just at daylight. He saw the rope of blankets hanging from the open window, and, rushing excitedly into the jail, woke up Jailer Aldrich with the cry, “Better look after your boarders—there’s a blanket hanging out of the jail windows.” Poor Aldrich, I was afterward told, rushed about as though bereft of his reason.
Another piece of unpleasant news was the row made by the liveryman of Saxton’s River. It seems that Woods had disregarded my instructions as to the team we hired from there, and, instead of payingfor it with the money I gave him, had it charged against me. Besides that he had driven to Troy, got intoxicated, and while attempting to sell the outfit was arrested and taken back to Keene. The liveryman, ascertaining who had engaged the team, lodged a complaint against me, and in the minds of some people I had become a horse thief as well as a bank burglar. Eventually the liveryman recovered his turnout unharmed. Later, though, through my brother, I paid him one hundred and twenty-five dollars to escape an indictment for horse stealing. Woods’s love for liquor and disregard of my instructions was the means of casting further odium on me.
I had been in Stewart’s nearly three weeks when I learned that Shinburn had been recaptured and sent to Concord prison to complete his sentence. I was sorry to hear this. Indeed, I felt despondent for several days over the mishap to that criminal, regardless of my effort to shake off the almost unaccountable feeling. I hadn’t succeeded when a development forcibly turned my attention into another channel. My hopes, which had grown wonderfully since my employment, were suddenly dissipated like a morning mist before an August sun. One morning a man whom I had known intimately in Boston—indeed, considered to be a trusted friend—came to the store. He was as much surprised at the meeting as I was frightened. There was no opportunity to evade him, so I made the best attempt I could to beunconcerned, and declared my delight at seeing him. We shook hands heartily and talked over my predicament, not forgetting to speak of the reward that was offered for my return to New Hampshire. He expressed sympathy for me and bemoaned the fact that I had been dealt with so unjustly, and held me blameless for escaping from my enemies. We were about to say adieu when I asked him if he would mention anything of our meeting when he returned to Boston.
“On my honor, no!” he answered with a ring in his voice which sounded true and friendly.
“I hope not,” said I, gratefully, “for I’ve been pretty badly handled, and I’m trying hard to get myself together again. If they find I’m here, it’ll be all day with me.”
And so we parted, but in my heart there came a heaviness, a sense of depression that I couldn’t shake off, try as I would. I had a premonition that this friend, regardless of his protestations, would be sadly tempted by the reward. I felt that he would argue that I would sooner or later be captured, and that there was no reason why he shouldn’t get the benefit of the thousand dollars. In the scales, his friendship on one side and avarice on the other, I believed that the former would prove the lighter weight. Indeed, I was so deeply impressed with impending danger that I resigned that day, drew five dollars due me, and left the store forever. It was wellthat I acted thus promptly, for not many hours subsequently the police were searching for me. My friend’s faithfulness had been of the kind that wouldn’t stand the test. In the balance, weighed against his love for money, his friendship for me had proved many ounces too light.
Verily, I was being persecuted to the end.