Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/108

72 and inhuman punishment. The story has a double interest, both as showing the opportunities for malicious cruelty possessed by even a subordinate prison officer, and the infinite charity with which O'Reilly was able to forgive an atrocious wrong.

At one of the stations to which he was occasionally sent with messages there was an overseer, warden, or watch-dog of some sort, who chose to be an exception to all human kind, by conceiving, at sight, a bitter dislike to young O'Reilly. On their very first meeting he looked hard at the new-comer, and said:

"Young man, you know what you are here for"; adding, with an oath, "I will help you to know it." From that time on he watched his victim sharply, hoping to catch him in some infraction of the many regulations governing the convict settlement.

At last his time came. O'Reilly, one day, was a few minutes late in making his trip. He found the overseer waiting for him, watch in hand. "You are late,—so many minutes," he said; "you are reported." Among the penalties of being "reported," one was that the offender should not be allowed to send or receive a letter for six months. A few days after this incident, the overseer called O'Reilly into his office. He held in his hand a letter, heavily bordered in black, which he had just perused. O'Reilly knew that his mother, at home in Ireland, had been dangerously ill for some time. The letter probably bore the news of her death, but it might contain tidings of a less bitter loss. Nobody in the place, except the overseer, knew its contents. He said: "O'Reilly, here is a letter for you." The prisoner said, "Thank you," and held out his hand for it. The overseer looked at him for a moment, then, tossing the letter into a drawer, said, "You will get it in six months!"

When at the end of six months he received the letter, he found that it confirmed his worst fears. The mother whom he had loved and idolized was dead.

Listening to this story, years afterwards, from the lips