Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

By JOHN D. SWAIN was sprung from the pen a cold drizzle drove in from the east. For hours he had breasted it, and now, with twilight settling down, his cheap shoes squelched the thin black mud that had been churned up in the country roads. It was many hours since he had eaten his last breakfast in the prison. The warden, a good and just man, had invited him to his own table, speaking heartening words to him, referring to many of “his boys” who had gone forth from these grim cor- ridors with high courage to make a fresh start, and who had won honor and fortune and had wiped clean the foul slate of their past. He told him—the warden did—of mis- takes that had been made, whereby inno- cent men had suffered for crimes they never committed; and how, refusing to sink be- neath this harshest of all fate’s buffets, they had gone out with a smile and with their spirits unsoured. O: the morning that Mike the Wop The chaplain, too, had striven against the sullen bitterness he sensed in the Wop— who was not a wop at all, his parentage being shrouded in mystery. Old lifers—who are by no means all bad —wistfully eying this boy who was re- turning to that place in the sun they could nevermore enjoy, whispered rough but sin- cere advice and warning from lips that did not seem to move. “Go straight, Mike! There’s nothing in it, the other way. Look at us—rotting the years away. Waiting to die, and have our old bodies claimed—or mebbe just for- gotten and planted here in the yard. You are young; everything waits for you there outside: a wife, kids; the chance to look every guy in the eyes and not have to tap out your signals on stone walls with a guard ready to jump you if you try to pass the time o’ day. Gawd! We wish we had vour chance. Don’t come back here!” They were old, wise, shrewd—warden, chaplain, long-time men —hard to deceive, 904 Conniclaoolk CO