The Picture

THE STORY OF THE KEEPER OF THE JAIL

by Mary Kyle Dallas

My name is Dodge. I’m the keeper of the Honey Hill jail. It’s an easy place, I must admit. The salary is small, but there is very little to do. We don’t have many prisoners. One or two idle loafers about the village get turned in occasionally, and once every year or so we have a burglar.

I have my garden, and the children play in it, and sometimes I forget the whole place does not belong to me. For two or three stupid old men making shoes and a shabby woman or two binding them, isn’t much of a prison.

Why, I’ve gone off all day and left the keys with my wife, for the prisoners would never have thought of escaping if the door had been open. They were [too] comfortable.

That is the way it was, anyhow, when he came. Who was he? Well, he said his name was Smith, but, I suppose, that he really had another. He came to the town and wandered about day after day, behaving in the strangest way, and at last he went to the magistrate and asked to be locked up in prison.

“Why?” says the magistrate. “What have you done?”

“No matter what,” says he, “but I deserve it.”

Of course he couldn’t be committed for that, but he had his way at last. He walked into a shop and put his hand into the money-drawer. So I got him. He came in one morning—a gentleman every inch of him—but as thin as you could fancy a man, and every now and then looking over his shoulder.

“Shut the door, quick… Read More