Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/102

 instead almost confidently at ease—such impressions of a penitentiary warden as he had formed here and there from different sources, that involved as their prime factor brutishness, were not at all applicable to the pleasant- faced, short, sturdy man who greeted him.

A glance at his card, and Warden Rand, shaking hands, pulled up a chair for him beside the desk and waved him into it.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Merton," said the warden with unaffected cordiality, leaning back in his own seat. "I'm glad to see you—I knew your father slightly—not as well as I would have liked, but well enough to hold him in the highest regard and esteem."

"Yes," said Merton, in a low voice, and his black eyes dropped to his hands that were playing with the glove he had taken off.

Warden Rand bent forward with a quick, impulsive movement and laid a hand on Merton's shoulders with kindly pressure.

"Pardon me," he said gently; then briskly, changing the subject: "You've come over in reference to Varge, Mr. Merton, I suppose?"

"Yes," Merton answered. He pulled himself together and looked up. "Yes; I wanted to see you about Varge. I don't know whether you know all the circumstances, rather strange ones—how he came to be with us, the years he was there and—"

"I know," interposed Warden Rand. "It is a very peculiar case. Sheriff Marston told me all about it."

"Then," said Merton, forcing a sober smile, "I think you'll understand why I've come. The man is not bad at heart; what he did was in the hot impulse of the