Measure for Measure

by Amy Randolph

“Two years’ hard labor in the State’s Prison!”

The dull, stolid face of the prisoner at the bar turned a shade paler – the heavy underlip drooped slightly – and that was all. But from a shabby woman in the crowd there rose up such a shrill wail of agony as pierced its way to the very roof.

“No, no, your honor! Surely you wouldn’t be so hard on a poor widow woman as that, and he the only son I’ve left in the world! He never did it, your worship --- it was only them rascally fellows he was with. Surely, surely, your worship---”

“Be still, woman!” said the officer, authoritatively. “What do you mean by raising such an outcry as this in court?”

As the judge stood with one foot on the step of his handsome little coupe, a tall figure rose up, almost from underneath the horses’ feet, with an uplifted, menacing finger.

“You’ve shown no mercy to me, Judge Emerson – may be the time’s comin’ that Heaven’s face will be turned away from you. I’ll never cease calling down curses on you, day or night!”

“The lower classes have such a propensity for making scenes on the slightest provocation,” thought the judge, leaning snugly back among the crimson cushions.

A hard, stern man, Judge Emerson had never learned the lesson of tempering justice with mercy. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” was his code, and even the shadow of affliction in his own home had not bent the nature that was like cast iron.

The clear, white moonlight was glimmering brightly over the crusted surface of the snow that had not yet been cleared entirely away, and the bitter wind swept keenly across Judge Emerson’s face as he alighted in front of the brown stone mansion where the light shown like red stars through the silk draperies of the plate glass windows.

“Bitterly cold,”… Read More