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 correspondents had had pleasure in celebrating him and his work in their despatches, and because of his popularity among the miners, to say nothing of his popularity among the newspaper men, he had been nominated for lieutenant-governor on the ticket with Altgeld. There was in our relations a camaraderie which put any thought of presumption out of the question; besides, I was always so much opposed to the killing of human beings, especially to that peculiarly horrible form of killing which the state deliberately and in cold blood commits under the euphemism of "capital punishment," that I was always ready to ask any governor to commute a sentence of death that had been pronounced against anybody; so that it seemed a simple matter to ask Joe Gill, himself the heart of kindness, to save the life of this boy whose soul had wandered so desperately astray in the clouds which darkened it.

Early the next morning—the telegrams had come at night—I went over to the governor's office, and the governor's private secretary told me that Lieutenant-Governor Gill had not yet appeared, and as a good secretary, anxious to protect his chief, he asked:

"What do you want to see him about?"

"This Prendergast they're going to hang in Chicago next Friday."

At this a man sitting in the room near the secretary's desk looked up with a sudden access of intense interest; and, starting from his chair and transfixing me with a sharp glance, he asked: