“I really didn’t mean to kidnap you and the car, youngster, but I’ve had a pain under my left pocket all day, and I have got to operate on it.  A sudden impulse told me that it would be easier if I took you with me to—­to sort of stand by,” said my beautiful Gouverneur Faulkner in a grave tone of voice as I whirled him out the broad avenue that led to the west end of the city.

“Oh, my Gouverneur Faulkner, is it that you are ill, perhaps to die by a knife?” I exclaimed and for a second I let that wild Cherry run in a very dangerous manner almost upon another large car in the act of turning into the street.

“No, not that, Robert,” he answered me quickly and he laid his hand on my arm beside him for an instant as if to give a steadiness to me.  “I want you to take me out to the State Prison.  I want to talk face to face with a man who killed his own brother, in cold blood, it is said.  A pretty powerful influence is at me day and night for a reprieve and I—­I don’t know what to do about it.  It is a difficult case.  If I went in my official capacity to see the man it might give his friends undue hopes; and suddenly I felt that I could run away from the whole bunch at this hour of the day and see the man himself without anybody’s knowing it save the superintendent of the prison and myself.  You don’t count, because in this case you are myself.”

“Always I would be yourself to you, my reverenced Gouverneur Faulkner,” I made reply to him as I raised my eyes to his deep ones that smiled down into them.

“I wonder if that is as good as it sounds, boy,” asked my Gouverneur Faulkner gently, as he looked down at me with both a laugh and a sadness influencing the smile of his mouth.  “Sometimes I badly need two of myself.  They are at me from waking to sleeping and I often feel cut into little bits and I can’t even say so.  In fact, youngster, I’m squealing to you more than I’ve let myself do since I became the chief executive of this State of Harpeth.  Now, turn off into this road and go straight ahead.  The prison is about a mile back there at the foot of that hill.”

“I—­like those squeals,” I answered to his smile as I put my Cherry against the spring wind and raced down that long road at a great speed that prevented any more conversation at that moment.  My pride bade me show to that Gouverneur of Harpeth what good driving in a fine car I was able to accomplish.

Therefore it was not many minutes before we stood within the doors of that very grim and terrible home of the human beings who have sinned with a great crime.  I know that I am never to forget that hour and am to carry forever the wound that it inflicted upon my heart as I walked through the dimness and grayness and stillness of that dark house.

At last, with many unlockings of heavy doors by the director of that prison, we stood in a room that was as a cage in which to keep the human animal that crouched down upon a hard bed in one of its corners and leaned a head shaved bare of any hair upon a very thin and white hand.