Jack Harkaway and His Son's Escape from the Brigands of Greece Part 18

The porter looked hard at the coin in his hand, and then at the cripple.

He was a man of no sentiment, this porter, and so he asked the generous donor bluntly what he wanted for the money.

"I only want you to show some consideration and kindness, if possible, to some of the unfortunate inmates of this place," was the reply.

"Prisoners?"

"Yes."

"If you expect that," said the porter "you had better take back your money, for I have nothing to do with the prisoners."

The cripple looked grave, and he muttered to himself--

"This fool is beastly conscientious. If he had only proved a bit of a rogue, there was a chance--the a.s.s!"

But he did not mean to yield the point yet.

"You are a very good man," he said to the porter, "a worthy honest fellow, and you will know that I don't mean to offer you any thing like a bribe."

The porter started.

"A bribe!" he said, with an expletive. "You had better not."

"Ahem!" coughed the cripple. "My friend, I have confined in this prison my son, a poor misguided boy--"

"They are mostly that," said the porter shortly.

"But he is innocent."

"They are all innocent," said the porter.

"All?"

"According to their own showing."

"But my boy is."

"No doubt"

"And I only want to beg you to do what you can to soften his lot--a hard lot it is, too."

"I can do nothing, I tell you," said the porter; "I never see the prisoners."

"I thought--"

"At least, when I say never, I mean only when they are allowed to walk in the prison yard."

"That is here?"

"Yes."

"When is that?"

"Once a day; sometimes more than that, if the doctor orders it."

"The doctor must order it, then?" said the cripple to himself.

"What is your son in for?" asked the porter.

"For an unfortunate resemblance he bears to a notorious brigand."

"Bah!" exclaimed the porter. "They don't imprison a man for being like another."

"Yes, they do; my unlucky son has been taken for Mathias the brigand."

"What," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the doorkeeper, "do you mean that Mathias is not Mathias?"

"I mean that my son has been taken for Mathias, to whom, indeed, he is so like that nothing but the capture of the real culprit can save my son."

The doorkeeper eyed the cripple sharply.

But the latter stood it coolly enough.

"Well," said the door porter, "if that is the case, it is certainly a very hard job for your son. What do you want me to do for him? I can't let him out."

"My friend," exclaimed the cripple, "think you I would suggest such a thing? No, all I would ask of you is to soothe him with a kind word."

"I'll tell him when next he comes out."

"At what time did you say?" asked the cripple, looking on the ground as though he only put the question casually.

"At twelve."

The cripple's eyes glistened as he heard this.

"Well, well," he said, pressing some more money into the door porter's hand, "I'll call again, and perhaps you may have seen my boy, and comforted him with the a.s.surance that I'll save him, in spite of all the ill these accursed English people can work by the aid of their money."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the porter. "The English are at work in it, eh?"

"Yes. They owe him some spite, and money, you know, can buy any thing-- any thing." And blessing the gatekeeper, he hobbled off.

Near the prison he overtook a blind man begging by the roadside, and while stopping to drop a coin in his hat, the cripple contrived to whisper a few hurried words to this effect--

"I have made a step--almost made a breach in the fortress."

"You have!"