Peter Floome--when, upon a Sunday, the prison chaplain exhorted his not over-heedful flock to pious dependence upon the divine care--was wont to make his own disparaging comments upon the well-meant, but often inapplicable discourse. "'Tain't a grain o' use" (said this volunteer critic, to his fellow-convicts) "o' the chaplain braggin' _in here_ 'bout Providence, an' sich. Most prob'ly th' Almighty _is_, more or less, round 'tendin' to things; but, nat'rally, the devil takes charge o' prisons, an' runs 'em putty much his own way."
Peter, having had a good twenty years' stretch of prison life, his experience undoubtedly counted. His utterances were, however, to be taken with that corrective grain of salt with which one wisely qualifies the statement of the "crank;" for though, in the main, mentally sound, through long confinement, and much hopeless pondering, Peter Floome's brain had taken a decidedly pessimistic twist, and, in prison circles, he was unanimously dubbed "a crank." It was after the death of Warden Flint's wife, that Peter's theology became a shade more optimistic, for then it was that the warden's year-old daughter, by the tacit consent of all whom it might concern, fell to his especial care.
In his capacity of runner, Peter had, comparatively, the freedom of the prison, and was particularly detailed for duty in the warden's household. The child--with that unaccountable choice of favourites inherent in her kind--had taken famously to her convict dry-nurse. It was the sudden rising of this new star on the runner's narrow horizon, that inspired the following harangue: "Ef th' Almighty, as I say, don't jest _put up_ in prisons, Himself, leastways He _does_, now an' agin, send little angels, an' _sich_, to keep up a feller's courage."
Peter and his "little angel" might now often be seen together; for the child, following hard upon his heels, had one day slipped furtively through the guard-room door, and had thus become a regular _habitué_ of that semi-public apartment.
Ten summers of this exceptional child-life had passed over May-blossom's golden head, when Destiny (that other name for Providence) suddenly removed her to an environment far more kindly than that in which her sweet young eyes had opened upon this many-sided existence. But, to explain, we must escape at once from prison.