It had one
point of special awe for me, and I used to watch him in church and think
of it, till I am ashamed to say that I forgot even when to stand up and
sit down. He had served ten years of his sentence. Ten years! Ten times
three hundred and sixty-five days! All the days of the years of my life.
The weight of that undeserved punishment had fallen on him the year that
I was born, and all that long, long time of home with Mother and Father
and Jem--all the haymaking summers and snowballing winters--whilst Jem
and I had never been away from home, and had had so much fun, and
nothing very horrid that I could call to mind except the mumps--he had
been an exile working in chains. I remember rousing up with a start from
the realization of this one Sunday to find myself still standing in the
middle of the Litany. My mother was behaving too well herself to find me
out, and though Jem was giggling he dared not move, because he was
kneeling next my father, whose back was turned to me. I knelt down, and
started to hear the parson say--"show Thy pity upon all prisoners and
captives!" And then I knew what it is to wish when it is too late.
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