If anybody had told Jerry Stokes the week before that he possessed an
ample, unexhausted fund of natural enthusiasm, Jerry Stokes would have
looked upon him as only fit for Hatwood Asylum. He was a solid, stolid,
thick-headed man, was Jerry, who honestly believed in the importance of
his office, and hanged men as respectably as he would have slaughtered
oxen. But that incredible verdict, as it seemed to him, begot in him
suddenly a fierce outburst of zeal which was all the more violent
because of its utter novelty. For the first time in his life he woke up
to the enthusiasm of humanity. You'll often find it so in very
phlegmatic men; it takes a great deal to stir their stagnant depths; but
let them once be aroused, and the storm is terrible, the fire within
them burns bright with a warmth and light which astonishes everybody.
For days the look on Richard Ogilvy's face, when he heard that false
verdict returned against him, haunted the hangman's brain every hour of
the twenty-four. He lay awake on his bed and shuddered to think of it.
Come what might, that man must never be hanged. And, please heaven,
Jerry added, they should never hang him.
The sentence, Canadian fashion, was for six clear weeks. And at the end
of that time, unless anything should turn up meanwhile to prevent it, it
would be Jerry's duty to hang the man he believed to be innocent.
For all those years, Jerry had stolidly and soberly hanged whomever he
was bid, taking it for granted the law was always in the right, and that
the men on whom he operated were invariably malefactors. But now, a
great horror possessed his soul. The revulsion was terrible. This one
gross miscarriage of justice, as it seemed to him, raised doubts at the
same time in his startled soul as to the rightfulness of all his
previous hangings. Had he been in the habit of doing innocent men to
death for years? Was the law, then, always so painfully fallible? Could
it go wrong in all the dignity of its unsullied ermine? Jerry could hang
the guilty without one pang of remorse. But to hang the innocent!--he
drew himself up; that was altogether a different matter.
Yet what could he do? A petition? Impossible! Never within his memory
could Jerry recollect so perfect a unanimity of public opinion in favour
of a sentence. A petition was useless. Not a soul would sign it.
Everybody was satisfied. Let Ogilvy swing! The very women would have
lynched the man if they could have caught him at the first. And now that
he was to be hanged, they were heartily glad of it.
Still, there is nothing to spur a man on in a hopeless cause like the
feeling that you stand alone and unaided. Jerry Stokes saw all the world
was for hanging Ogilvy--with the strange and solitary exception of the
public hangman. And what did the public hangman's opinion count in such
a case? As Jerry Stokes well knew, rather less than nothing.
Day after day wore away, and the papers were full of "the convict
Ogilvy." Would he confess, or would he not? that was now the question.
Every second night the Toronto papers had a special edition with a
"Rumoured Confession of the Napanee Murderer," and every second morning
they had a telegram direct from Kingston jail to contradict it. Not a
doubt seemed to remain with anybody as to the convict's guilt. But the
papers reiterated daily the same familiar phrase, "Ogilvy persists to
the end in maintaining his innocence."
[Illustration: "IT COST HIM DEAR, THAT EPISTLE."]
Jerry had read these words a hundred times before, about other
prisoners, with a gentle smile of cynical incredulity; he read them now
with blank amazement and horror at the callousness of a world which
could hang an innocent man without appeal or inquiry.
Time ran on, and the eve of the execution arrived at last. Something
must be done: and Jerry did it. That night he sat long in his room by
himself, in the unwonted throes of literary composition. He was writing
a letter--a letter of unusual length and surprising earnestness. It cost
him dear, that epistle; with his dictionary by his side, he stopped many
times to think, and bit his penholder to fibre. But he wrote none the
less with fiery indignation, and in a fever of moral zeal that
positively astonished himself. Then he copied it out clean on a separate
sheet, and folded the letter when done, with a prayer in his heart. It
was a prayer for mercy on a condemned criminal--by the public hangman.
After that he stuck a stamp on with trembling fingers, and posted it
himself at the main office.
All that night long Jerry lay awake and thought about the execution. As
a rule, executions troubled his rest very little. But then, he had never
before had to hang an innocent man--at least he hoped not--though his
faith in the law had received a severe shock, and he trembled to think
now what judicial murders he might have helped in his time unconsciously
to consummate.
Next morning early, at the appointed hour, Jerry Stokes presented
himself at Kingston jail. The sheriff was there, and the chaplain, and
the prisoner. Ogilvy looked at him hard with a shrinking look of horror.
Jerry had seen that look, too, a hundred times before, and disregarded
it utterly: it was only the natural objection of a condemned criminal to
the constitutional officer appointed to operate on him. But this time it
cut the man to the very quick. That an innocent fellow-creature should
regard him like that was indeed unendurable, especially when he, the
public hangman, was the only soul on earth who believed in his
innocence!
[Illustration: "I AIN'T A-GOING TO HANG THIS MAN."]
The chaplain stood forward and read the usual prayers. The condemned man
repeated them after him in a faltering voice. As he finished, the
sheriff turned with a grave face to Jerry. "Do your duty," he said. And
Jerry stared at him stolidly.
"Sheriff," he began at last, after a very long pause, bracing himself up
for an effort, "I've done my duty all my life till this, and I'll do it
now. There ain't going to be no execution at all here this morning!"
The sheriff gazed at him astonished.
"What do you mean, Stokes?" he asked, taken aback at this sudden turn.
"No reprieve has come. The prisoner is to be hanged without fail to-day
in accordance with his sentence. It says so in the warrant: 'wherein
fail not at your peril.'"
Jerry looked round him with an air of expectation. "No reprieve hasn't
come yet," he answered, in a stolid way; "but I'm expecting one
presently. I've done my duty all my life, sheriff, I tell you, and I'll
do it now. I ain't a-going to hang this man at all--because I know he's
innocent."
The prisoner gasped, and turned round to him in amaze. "Yes, I'm
innocent!" he said slowly, looking him over from head to foot; "but
you--how do you know it?"
"I know it by your face," Jerry answered sturdily; "and I know by the
other one's face it was him that did it."
The sheriff looked on in puzzled wonderment. This was a hitch in the
proceedings he had never expected. "Your conduct is most irregular,
Stokes," he said at last, stroking his chin in his embarrassment; "most
irregular and disconcerting. If you had a conscientious scruple against
hanging the prisoner, you should have told us before. Then we might have
arranged for some other executioner to serve in your place. As it is,
the delay is most unseemly and painful: especially for the prisoner.
Your action can only cause him unnecessary suspense. Sooner or later
this morning, somebody must hang him."
But Jerry only looked back at him with an approving nod. The sheriff had
supplied him, all inarticulate that he was, with suitable speech. "Ah,
that's just it, don't you see," he made answer promptly, "it's a
conscientious scruple. That's why I won't hang him. No man can't be
expected to go agin his conscience. I never hanged an innocent man
yet--least-ways not to my knowledge; and s'help me heaven, I won't hang
one now, not for the Queen nor for nobody!"
The sheriff paused. The sheriff deliberated. "What on earth am I to do?"
he exclaimed, in despair. "If _you_ won't hang him, how on earth at this
hour can I secure a substitute?"
Jerry stared at him stolidly once more, after his wont. "If _I_ don't
hang him," he answered, with the air of one who knows his ground well,
"it's _your_ business to do it with your own hands. 'Wherein fail not at
your peril.' And I give you warning beforehand, sheriff, if you _do_
hang him--why, you'll have to remember all your life long that you
helped to get rid of an innocent man, when the common hangman refused to
execute him!"
To such a pitch of indignation was he roused by events that he said it
plump out, just so, "the common hangman." Rather than let his last
appeal lack aught of effectiveness in the cause of justice, he consented
so to endorse the public condemnation of his own respectable, useful,
and necessary calling!
There was a pause of a few minutes, during which the sheriff once more
halted and hesitated; the prisoner looked around with a pale and
terrified air; and Jerry kept his eye fixed hard on the gate, like one
who really expects a reprieve or a pardon.
"Then you absolutely refuse?" the sheriff asked at last, in a despairing
sort of way.
"I absolutely refuse," Jerry answered, in a very decided tone. But it
was clear he was beginning to grow anxious and nervous.
"In that case," the sheriff replied, turning round to the jailor, "I
must put off this execution for half an hour, till I can get someone
else to come in and assist me."
Hardly had he spoken the words, however, when a policeman appeared at
the door of the courtyard, and in a very hurried voice asked eagerly to
be admitted. His manner was that of a man who brings important news.
"The execution's not over, sir?" he said, turning to the sheriff with a
very scared face. "Well, thank heaven for that! Dr. Wade's outside, and
he says, for God's sake, he must speak at once with you."
The sheriff hesitated. He hardly knew what to do. "Bring him in," he
said at last, after a solemn pause. "He may have something to tell us
that will help us out of this difficulty."
[Illustration: "HE WAS PALE AND HAGGARD."]
The condemned man, thus momentarily respited on the very brink of the
grave, stood by with a terrible look of awed suspense upon his bloodless
face. But Jerry Stokes' lips bore an expression of quiet triumph. He had
succeeded in his attempt, then. He had brought his man to book. That was
something to be proud of. Alone he had done it! He had saved the
innocent and exposed the guilty!
As they stood there and pondered, each man in silence, on his own
private thoughts, the policeman returned, bringing with him the doctor
whose evidence had weighed most against Ogilvy at the trial. Jerry
Stokes started to see the marvellous alteration in the fellow's face. He
was pale and haggard; his lips were parched; and his eyes had a sunken
and hollow look with remorse and horror. Cold sweat stood on his brow.
His mouth twitched horribly. It was clear he had just passed through a
terrible crisis.
He turned first to Jerry. His lips were bloodless, and trembled as he
spoke; his throat was dry; but in a husky voice he still managed to
deliver himself of the speech that haunted him. "Your letter did it," he
said slowly, fixing his eyes on the hangman; "I couldn't stand _that_.
It broke me down utterly. All night long I lay awake and knew I had sent
him to the gallows in my place. It was terrible--terrible! But I
wouldn't give way: I'd made up my mind, and I meant to pull through with
it. Then the morning came--the morning of the execution, and with it
your letter. Till that moment I thought nobody knew but myself. I wasn't
even suspected. When I saw _you_ knew, I could stand it no longer. You
said: 'If you let this innocent man swing in your place, I, the common
hangman, will refuse to execute him. If he dies, I'll avenge him. I'll
hound you to your grave. I'll follow up clues till I've brought your
crime home to you. Don't commit two murders instead of one. It'll do you
no good, and be worse in the end for you.' When I read those
words--those terrible words!--from the common hangman, 'Ah, heaven!' I
thought, 'I need try to conceal it no longer.' All's up now. I've come
to confess. Thank heaven I'm in time! Sheriff, let this man go. It was I
who poisoned her!"
There was a dead silence again for several seconds. Jerry Stokes was the
first of them all to break it. "I knew it," he said solemnly. "I was
sure of it. I could have sworn to it."
"And I am sure of it, too," the condemned man put in, with tremulous
lips. "I was sure it was he; but how on earth was I to prove it?"
The sheriff looked about him at all three in turn. "Well," he said
deliberately, with a sigh of relief, "I must telegraph for instructions
to Ottawa immediately. Prisoner, you are _not_ reprieved; but under
these peculiar circumstances, as Dr. Wade makes a voluntary confession
of having committed the crime himself, I defer the execution for the
present on my own responsibility. Jailer, I remit Mr. Ogilvy to the
cells till further instructions arrive from the Viceroy. Policeman, take
charge of Dr. Wade, who gives himself into custody for the murder of
Mrs. Ogilvy. Stokes, perhaps you did right after all. Ten minutes' delay
made all the difference. If you'd consented to hang the prisoner at
first, this confession might only have come after all was over."
The doctor turned to Jerry, with the wan ghost of a grim smile upon his
worn and pallid face. The marks of a great struggle were still visible
in every line. "And you won't be baulked of your fee, after all," he
added, with a ghastly effort at cynical calmness; "for you'll have _me_
to hang before you have seen the end of this business."
But Jerry shook his head. "I ain't so sure about that," he said,
scratching his thick, bullet poll, and holding his great square neck a
little on one side. "I ain't so sure of my trade as I used to be once,
sheriff and gentlemen. I always used to hold it was a useful, a
respectable, and a necessary trade, and of benefit to the community. But
I've began to doubt it. If the law can string up an innocent man like
this, and no appeal, except for the exertions of the public executioner,
why, I've began to doubt the expediency, so to speak, of capital
punishment. I ain't so certain as I was about the usefulness of hanging.
Dr. Wade, I think somebody else may have the turning of you off. Mr.
Ogilvy, I'm glad, sir, it was me that had the hanging of you. An
unscrupulous man might ha' gone for his fee. I couldn't do that: I gone
for justice. Give me your hand, sir. Thank you. You needn't be ashamed
of shaking hands once in a way with a public functionary--especially
when it's for the last time in his official career. Sheriff, I've had
enough of this 'ere work for life. I go back to the lumbering trade. I
resign my appointment."
It was a great speech for Jerry--an oratorical effort. But a prouder or
happier man there wasn't in Kingston that day than Jeremiah Stokes, late
public executioner.
_The Piece of Gold._