Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/102

 "What interest have you in the Prendergast case?"

"None," I said, "except that I don't want to have him, or anybody, hanged."

On the man's face, tired, with the expression of world-weariness life gives to the countenance behind which there has been too much serious contemplation of life, a face that seemed prematurely wrinkled, there suddenly appeared a smile as winning as a woman's, and he said in a voice that had the timbre of human sympathy and the humor of a peculiar drawl:

"Well, you're all right, then."

It thereupon occurred to the governor's secretary to introduce us, and so I made the acquaintance of Clarence Darrow. He had taken it upon himself to neglect his duties as the attorney of some of the railroads and other large corporations in Chicago long enough to come down to Springfield on his own initiative and responsibility to plead with the Governor for this lad's life (he was always going on some such Quixotic errand of mercy for the poor and the friendless), and we retired to the governor's ante-chamber to await the coming of Gill. We talked for a while about the Prendergast case, which might have had more sympathetic consideration had it not persisted as the Carter Harrison case in the mind of that public, which when its latent spirit of vengeance is aroused can so easily become the mob, but it was not long until I discovered that Darrow had read books other than those of the law, and for an hour we talked of Tol