Read Ebook: The Wright Brothers' Engines and Their Design by Hobbs Leonard S

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Ebook has 296 lines and 28779 words, and 6 pages

The negro dashed through the room before the astonished attorney could stop him. The jailer's door was locked, but from the bunch of keys the prisoner chanced to choose the right one first. He thrust it into the lock, turned the bolt just as the bewildered lawyer rushed upon him, opened the door, shut it, and, bracing his excited strength upon it, locked it again.

He was outdoors and for the moment free. He could hear the uproar from within the jail as the assistant jailer and a companion rushed into the office from the corridors where they had been busy clearing up the prisoners' supper things.

It was just at this moment that Judge Vernon sat down to dinner.

JUDGE VERNON'S TROUBLE.

The escaped prisoner looked up and down the street an instant, and then leaped across the short distance between the rock-pile yard and the alley. A man on the other side of the street, attracted by the unusual uproar in the jail, ran across just in time to see the figure of the negro escaping up the alley. He disappeared in the dusk before the man could determine which way he had turned when reaching the end of the block.

The city lay about him in the gathering night. He knew that it would be some time before the jail could be opened, as all the doors were now locked and heavy bars closed every window. But the alarm would soon be given to officers on the outside, and the pursuit would be swift and thorough.

In his sullen rage he determined to seek refuge in his old haunts in Freetown. The police would surely seek him there, but so they would everywhere. Skulking close to buildings, dodging up alleys, seeking every spot of darkest shadow, the man made his way rapidly toward the district which had grown notorious in the criminal history of the city. As he ran, his sinful heart beat alternately with anger at the justice that pursued him, and with coarse joy at his temporary escape from it.

A little after ten o'clock Judge Vernon came into the sitting-room where his wife still sat with her fancy-work. He walked back and forth several times without saying a word. At last he stopped and sat down by the table.

"Eliza, what shall we do about Claude? He is simply making a wreck of his life the way he is living."

"I know it." The mother's fingers trembled as she rested them on the work in her lap.

"It was only yesterday that I learned of his drinking at these parties to which he goes so often. What are the fathers and mothers of Merton thinking of, that they allow their boys to learn these habits in the best society?" Judge Vernon spoke with a force that lost sight, for the time, of the fact that he himself was one of the very fathers that he so severely condemned.

"Do you think it is the best society, John?" asked Mrs. Vernon with a boldness that was not a part of her character.

"O John, don't talk so!" Mrs. Vernon let her work fall on the floor, and her face was pale and her lips quivered nervously. She had never known her husband to break out so forcibly from his habitual stern repression of feeling, and it frightened her.

"It is simply what we must face sooner or later. Our girls--." The judge crowded down a rising passion, and for a moment there was perfect silence in the room. "Each of our girls one of these days will marry one of these society young men, such men as I am free to confess I never would choose for them."

Mrs. Vernon was silent. She was astonished at her husband's words.

"I see things in my court, Eliza, that convince me daily of the need of a great transformation in the city of Merton in its social life. I am simply appalled at the number of divorce cases. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the fast life lived by so many of the young people is utterly ruinous to soul and body. Hardly a case comes up that does not illustrate in some form the terrible influence of drink and gambling, much of it learned at the very parties where Claude is a frequent guest, at the very party, no doubt, where he is now."

He rose and walked up and down the room again. Mrs. Vernon sat silent and agitated.

"And I cannot help thinking of the people in Freetown. In the very heart of our Christian city there is a condition of lawlessness and impurity that very few realize. I see the results of it daily in my court, and my heart grows sick as I feel my powerlessness. Somehow--" Judge Vernon turned to his wife with a look and manner she had never known in him before. "Eliza, somehow I cannot help connecting the crime in Freetown, the dissipation and immorality in that district, with the same thing in what we call our best society. Somehow I am oppressed by the feeling that this city will suffer some great calamity even in its best homes because we have allowed such evils to grow up uncorrected in the right way. It seems to me sometimes as I sit in my place on the bench, that a judgment is hanging over this city, so fair in its outward appearance, yet so wrong in much of its human life."

John Vernon, judge of the district court, had been a man who all his life gave the impression, even to the members of his own family, that he was a stern, self-controlled person, whose emotions were held in check with almost Puritan or Spartan coldness. His wife wondered in her heart at the unusual exhibition of his feeling this evening. Finally she asked, "The prisoner you sentenced to-day, John,--he is one of a large class, do you think?"

"More than half the crime that is committed in the city comes from that class of young men."

"And you sentenced him to twenty years' imprisonment?"

"Yes; it was a brutal shooting affair. The other negro was lamed for life. Will probably lose an arm and foot."

"It is horrible, as you say. I do not see what we are coming to. But I do not see what connection there can be between the condition of things among the negroes in Freetown and that of the white people in the society we know."

Judge Vernon did not answer at once. Then he said: "Crime and immorality never can be confined to one spot in a city. They spread like contagion. In fact, they spread worse than disease, for we can restrain and shut in disease, but vice, until it becomes crime, may go unchecked anywhere. There is a sure contamination from Freetown spreading through the entire city, and I cannot escape the feeling that the best families in the place are in danger. Our own, perhaps. And really, Eliza, when you consider the superior training and advantages of the white race, have we very much to boast of when our own young men and women grow up to be drunkards and gamblers and unloving husbands and wives?"

He had risen again, and was nervously walking up and down. The clock struck the half-hour. The sound had only died away when the door-bell rung.

The judge walked into the hall and opened the outer door.

"It's you, Mr. Douglass? Come in."

"It is late to make a call, judge," said a deep, strong voice. "But I was just getting home from the meeting of the Christian Citizens' League; and, seeing a light, I thought I would just stop a moment. Have you heard the news from the jail?"

The Rev. Howard Douglass came into the hall, and Mrs. Vernon, who had risen and gone out there, greeted him.

"No; what news?"

"The negro, Burke Williams, has escaped, and is now at liberty. He assaulted the jailer, and succeeded in locking the door on the officers in the jail. The police are hunting for him now."

Judge Vernon listened in a greater degree of excitement than he had shown even during his conversation with his wife.

"Come in here, Mr. Douglass. If you can spare the time, I should like to talk over matters in Freetown. We are waiting for Claude to come home. This news of Williams adds to the thought I have been having lately about the people in Freetown."

Howard Douglass hesitated.

"It is rather late. But I am specially interested in the conditions over there. In fact, the matter of what to do with Freetown was the main subject of discussion at our League meeting to-night. Something ought to be done over there, or we shall have a heavy account to answer for at last, when the deeds of the body are summed up for judgment. The Christian people of Merton will be held largely responsible, I believe, for failure to help Christianize that spot."

"I begin to believe the same," replied Judge Vernon gravely.

He had paused thoughtfully with the evident purpose of going on to propose some plan, when they were startled by the sound of many heavy steps coming up the veranda walk.

Before the persons outside could ring the bell, Judge Vernon had flung the door open. Mrs. Vernon and Douglass stood close behind him. Looking out on the lighted veranda, they saw a group of men, among them two police officers, and carried on some rude couch, in the midst of the group, lay the form of a man covered with a blanket.

One of the officers addressed Judge Vernon.

"Judge, this is a hard piece of news to bring to you. In hunting for Burke Williams we found your son Claude lying near the end of Free Street, wounded and unconscious. That fiend Burke probably did it. He is robbed."

Mrs. Vernon pressed through between her husband and all the others.

"Claude, my son! Is he dead?"

"No, ma'am," replied the officer as he took off his hat. But he added in a lower tone as the terrified mother drew the blanket from the face of her boy, "No, not yet."

HOWARD DOUGLASS'S PLAN.

It was Sunday morning at Merton after an unusually exciting week. And, as the Rev. Howard Douglass went into his pulpit, and thoughtfully looked at the large congregation that crowded the church, his mind was filled with one idea, and that idea was the redemption of Freetown.

He had just come from Judge Vernon's. He had prayed in the room where Claude Vernon lay, his young life wavering on the border-land of that other country, where death is forever shut out, but where judgment still is potent; and with the memory of that still, white face the minister faced his people.

He had been spending the entire week in gathering materials for his sermon, and the escape of the prisoner from the jail, the assault on Claude Vernon, the son of the judge, and the uncertainty of the prisoner's whereabouts, together with the flickering life of the young man, formed a natural climax to what the minister had prepared. It had been a long time since a sermon in Merton had produced such a sensation. Yet it was quietly delivered, was full of figures, and was not sensational in the common use of that word.

"What have we ever done to redeem Freetown?" asked Howard Douglass, after giving the people a look at the place, fortified by undisputed facts as to its needs. "It lies in the midst of a Christian city practically uncared for. It is cursed and feared and criticised for the vice and crime that flow out of it. But how much have the Christian people of this town ever done to check or remove the source of that evil? How much money have we ever spent over there? How much time have we ever given from our receptions and parties and entertainments to teach Freetown the way to eternal life?

"I am unable to escape the burden of personal responsibility whenever I pass through this place. I believe the Judge of all the earth will condemn the Christian disciples of Merton in the last great day if they do not give up their endless round of pleasure-seeking and waste of God's wealth, and personally throw the strength of their lives into the solution of this problem.

"How shall we redeem Freetown? It is not an impossibility. It is not a vague dream of what may be. It is within the reach of actual facts. It can be redeemed. The place can be saved, even as a soul by itself can be saved by Jesus. But it is God's way to save men by means of other men. He does not save by means of angels, or in any way apart from the use of men as the means. What will you do to redeem Freetown? I have a plan. I want you to listen to it."

He then rapidly sketched his plan. People all over the church leaned forward and listened excitedly. Here and there heads nodded in assent, but for the most part there was simply a fixed attention that did not at once show that it had reached the minister's conclusions.

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