egislature while
Anse lay in jail, had come over from Clayton, bound for the state
capital, to draw his mileage and be a statesman.

It was not in the breed for the victorious Trantham to taunt his hobbled
enemy or even to look his way, but he sat just across the aisle from the
prisoner so that his ear might catch the jangle of the heavy irons when
Dugmore moved in his seat. They all left the train together at the
little blue-painted Frankfort station, Trantham turning off at the first
crossroads to go where the round dome of the old capitol showed above
the water-maple trees, and Dugmore clanking straight ahead, with a
string of negroes and boys and the sheriff following along behind
him. Under the shadow of a quarried-out hillside a gate opened
in a high stone wall to admit him into life membership with a
white-and-black-striped brotherhood of shame.

Four years there did the work for the gangling, silent mountaineer. One
day, just before the Christmas holidays, the new governor of the state
paid a visit to the prison. Only his private secretary came with him.
The warden showed them through the cell houses, the workshops, the
dining hall and the walled yards. It was a Sunday afternoon; the white
prisoners loafed in their stockade, the blacks in theirs. In a corner on
the white side, where the thin and skimpy winter sunshine slanted over
the stockade wall, Anse Dugmore was squatted; merely a rack of bones
enclosed in a shapeless covering of black-and-white stripes. On his
close-cropped head and over his cheekbones the skin was stretched so
tight it seemed nearly ready to split. His eyes, glassy and bleared with
pain, stared ahead of him with a sick man's fixed stare. Inside his
convict's cotton shirt his chest was caved away almost to nothing, and
from the collarless neckband his neck rose as bony as a plucked fowl's,
with great, blue cords in it. Lacking a coverlet to pick, his fingers
picked at the skin on his retreating chin.

As the governor stood in an arched doorway watching, the lengthening
afternoon shadow edged along and covered the hunkered-down figure by the
wall. Anse tottered to his feet, moved a few inches so that he might
still be in the sunshine, and settled down again. This small exertion
started a cough that threatened to tear him apart. He drew his hand
across his mouth and a red stain came away on the knotty knuckles. The
warden was a kindly enough man in the ordinary relations of life, but
nine