" STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL."

Evening Post, Volume XLVII, Issue 82, 7 April 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

" STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL ."

When the sheriff learned that I was " a newspaper feller " he cheerfully granted me permission to interview the condemned, who was to be executed four days later. I found the man resigned to his fate. At least he was lying on his cot reading a novel and smoking a clay pipe. He was a very quiet-spoken man, about thirty-five years of age, and he was found guilty of killing a man. I did not know the particulars, being a Btranger to the locality, but he asked by way of explanation :—: — " Stranger, did you ever own a dog?" "Yes." " A worthless, no-account, ramshackle purp that you wanted to get shet of awful bad?" " Yes ; I once had such a dog." " But if you had takin' him off to the woods to kill him, and a fellet had com? along and kicked him, your dander would have got up like lightinn', ek?" "I expect it would." " Jest my case, stranger. The minit Abe Turner kicked that purp I couldn't hold myself. I hit him, and he hit back, and then I shot him. How fur do you live from this ?" " Seven or eight hundred miles." " Goin' to stay till the hangin' ?" " Perhaps so." He looked at me for half a minute with an amused and friendly expression, and then dropped his voice to a whisper and queried : — •'You don't consider this your funeral, do you ?" " Oh ! certainly not." " " Don't make a cent's worth of difference to you whether I hang or the crowd is disappointed ?" " No." He smiled and chuckled, and went over to the door to see if anyone was listening. When he came back, he said : — " Thar won't be any hangin' ! This is strictly confidential, and I trust you not to give it away. Don't go to any expense to stop over, for thar won't be any circus." I didn't know whether he meant suicide or escape, and I didn't want to know. He winked at me, and I returned the compliment. Then we fell into a general conversation about worthless dogs, Abe Turngr, eccentric jurors, and so on, and I finally wished him a long life and lots of prosperity and withdrew. I didn't stay to witness the execution. I was in a town 200 miles away when I read in a newspaper that the condemned had dug his way out of gaol two days after the interview, and that the " circus " had been unavoidably postponed. If they have ever recaptured him the papers have had nothing to say about it.