The Nomad

It was Saturday night at the central station, and the prison cells were crowded with men and women. The trickle of the water from the hydrant on the marble floor, the odor of accumulated damps, and the laugh and jest held each their revelry. The bitter word and ribald song, mingled with a wail of sorrow and ever and anon a piercing cry, rose out of the din. Scattered on the banks some lay sleeping, and others rolled upon the floor in the ecstasy of their low debasement. Pale faces pierced curiously from the iron bars, and watched for sympathy in the idle crowd that hung around, or sought to find in the jailor’s hardened face some touch of human pity. It was a world within itself. The high and low met here upon a common level. One bond of sympathy united them—a mutual misery.

In one corner of the larger cell some half dozen women sat in a group or semicircle, and at their feet a child lay sleeping. Coarse shawls had been fashioned into a rude couch, and on this the girl was placed. Every eye of that watching group was bent upon her face, and on their hardened features lingered the light that one sometimes sees upon parental faces. It was no stranger’s pity that regarded her. The emotion visible upon every face sprung from no alien sympathy. Only love or devotion, or a sense of cast or superstition, could alone produce it. whatever it might be, the child’s face was one which even a stranger would pause to regard. It gleamed white and ghastly from the tresses of yellow hair that framed it like a picture. The young golden lashes lay above the blue veined underlids like… Read More