The defendant felt that this mitigation of the extreme penalty was a misplaced mercy. The disgrace could be no blacker and death would at least have brought to its period the hideousness of the nightmare which must now stretch endlessly into the future.
It was to a prisoner, sentenced and branded, that Major Withers came one afternoon when the court-martial of Lieutenant Spurrier had run its course as topic-in-chief for the Officers' Club at Manila. Other matters were already crowding it out of the minds it had profoundly shocked.
"I want to talk to you, Jack," began the major bluntly. "I want to talk to you with a candor that grows out of the affection we all felt for you--before this damnable thing upset our little world. My God, boy, you had life in your sling. You had every quality that makes the soldier; you had every social requisite except wealth. This besetting passion for gambling has brought the whole train of disaster--as logically as if you had killed him at the card table itself."
"You are overlooking the fact, major," interrupted the prisoner dryly, "that I didn't kill him. Moreover, it's too late now for the warning to benefit me. I dare say in Leavenworth I shall have no trouble curbing my passion for gaming." He paused and added with an irony of despairing bitterness: "But I suppose I should thank you and say, like the negro standing on the gallows, 'dis hyar is surely g'wine to be a great lesson ter me.'" Suddenly the voice broke and the young man wheeled to avert his face. "My God," he cried out, "why didn't you let them hang me or shoot me? Any man can stiffen his legs and his spine for five minutes of dying--even public dying--but back of those walls with a convict's number instead of a name----" There he broke off and the battalion commander laid a hand on his heaving shoulder.
"I didn't come to rub in preachments while you stood at the edge of the scaffold or the jail, Jack. My warning may not be too late, after all. We've passed the matter up to the war department with a strong recommendation for clemency. We mean to pull every wire that can honorably be pulled. We're making the most of your good record heretofore and of the conviction being based on circumstantial evidence."