CHAPTER XV.

BEHIND PRISON BARS.

A series of adventures had befallen Dean Mercer that seem unaccountable.

He could not give any intelligent explanation and awoke, as it were, to the horrible realization that he was the inmate of what seemed to him a prison, but which he was soon to find was the State Reform School.

A new name had been given him, which was simply a number, and he had entered upon a new phase of life hitherto unknown to him and undreamed of.

To tell how it had come about will involve a brief narrative that shows cruelty, scheming, audacity, almost inconceivable in these days of modern progress.

The reader already knows how Tim Downey decided to destroy the _Spray_ and how he secured the co-operation of two former acquaintances and desperate villains, named Spofford and Daley.

These men were professional thieves. Tim had once gone with them on a predatory excursion among the farmhouses near Millville, and when he came to Springfield it was with the intention of joining fortunes with them again.

Daley and Spofford, released from the lockup after their spree, had been found by Tim Downey, and threatened by him had agreed to do the job for which they had been hired.

Tim saw that they did not get anything more to drink, and they managed to get aboard the _Spray_ while Dean Mercer slept. The boy was chloroformed, and while Tim set fire to the boat the others bore the boy away.

Dean Mercer knew absolutely nothing for hours and hours. When he awoke, it was to find himself being roughly jolted in a wagon.

His hands and feet were tied, and he lay in a pile of hay under a seat on which he saw two men.

“Help! Where am I?”

One of the men, Daley, leaned back and glared at Dean with a savage scowl.

“Shut up!” he ordered.

“Where am I?”

“I’ll gag you if you don’t! Drive on, Spofford. There’s the place yonder, among the trees.”

To say that Dean was amazed, would be to express his emotions faintly.

He was mystified and alarmed. What had happened? Where was he? Who were the two men on the wagon seat? Why was he bound and taken away?

The manner of Daley boded no good intent in his movements.

Dean was silent. He tried to think out the bewildering mystery of the moment, but vainly.

“Here, boy, you drink!”

As the wagon came to a halt, Daley sprang over the seat and held a flask to Dean’s lips.

“I am not thirsty.”

“Drink, I say.”

“I won’t.”

“Then I’ll make you.”

Daley did make him, and Dean wriggled and twisted vainly as the man forced some burning liquid down his throat.

He moaned feebly as his senses seemed reeling once more, and he knew that some powerful drug had been administered to him.

“Is he all right?” asked Spofford.

“I guess so,” replied Daley, who watched Dean until he saw his heavy eyelids close. “Drive on.”

“That’s the house ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Will we find Justice Mullern there?”

“I guess we will. If he is in town we’ll wait for him. I don’t want to take the case among people.”

The wagon was driven close to the gateway to quite a pretentious residence.

Upon its veranda sat a red-face, stupid-looking man, and Daley, springing from the wagon, approached him.

“Good day, judge,” he said.

Justice Mullern stared at Daley curiously.

“Oh, yes, I know you now,” he said, after a pause. “You’re Daley.”

“Daley it is, judge. I’ve got a case for you.”

“What kind of a case?”

“Burglary.”

“Have to bring it to my town office.”

“That don’t suit me. I’m in a hurry. See here, judge, you can be accommodating if you want to. I threw a hundred dollars in your way for discharging me for larceny some time since.”

Mullern flushed slightly.

“Ahem! Yes, yes, well?”

“It’s fifty now, and a plain case. In the wagon there is a boy.”

“Your boy?”

“My nephew,” lied Daley glibly.

“Bad boy?”

“Terrible!”

“What’s he been doing?”

“Stealing. He’s the worst thief you ever saw. I’ve had to tie him hand and foot to fetch him here. The evidence is plain--mine and a friend. You just try the case informally.”

“It’s sort of irregular?” demurred the justice.

“Not at all. Who’s going to know the difference? You’re the law in this district, ain’t you?”

“I reckon I am.”

“Take the case to town, and you make a few dollars in fees?”

“Ye-es.”

“Try it here, and it’s a fifty dollar note for you.”

“There ought to be a jury?”

“Nonsense!”

“I might get in trouble.”

“How?”

“Irregular proceedings.”

“We won’t say so.”

“The boy?”

“Send him to the reform school, and that’s the end of it. There’s your money.”

The justice’s last qualms of conscience seemed to vanish at the sight of money.

He went indoors, and Daley followed him. Mullern seated himself at a desk and asked Daley to relate his story. The latter went through the details of the false charge of theft.

“Boy’s name?” asked Mullern finally, selecting a legal blank and a pen.

“Robert Rawley.”

“Age?”

“Sixteen.”

“Committed----”

“Till twenty-one.”

Justice Mullern wrote out a blank.

“I’ve no court officer here to take the boy,” he said.

“Just give me the document. I’ll deliver him over to the reform school authorities.”

The justice hesitated, but was finally prevailed upon to agree to Daley’s desires. The mummery of justice was completed at last. Without even so much as seeing the prisoner, the justice had sentenced Dean Mercer to a living tomb.

“Got it?” asked Spofford, as Daley returned to the wagon.

“Yes. Drive on to Epson Springs--the State Reform School.”

They arrived there at dusk. The warden received the prisoner and the document, Daley explaining that the former had in some way got liquor, and was stupid from its effects.

“He’s a hard case,” he told the warden, “tricky and deceptive. He’ll tell you a whole batch of his lies when he wakes up.”

“We’re used to that.”

“Watch him closely.”

“Never fear, we will,” answered the warden grimly.

The warden called an officer, and Dean, insensible, was removed to the solitary--a dark cell, where new and refractory prisoners are placed in penal institutions.

It was about midnight when he awoke. Not a ray of light permeated the place, and the confused boy had no idea of his whereabouts.

He called aloud for aid, for a light. The cold stone walls gave back a derisive echo, and no one came to his aid.

Then he felt his way around the place. He knew that he was shut up in a strong barred cell, but had no idea that it was a prison.

Dean tried to think, to theorize as to his situation, but life was a blank for the past seventy-four hours.

He was anxious, worried about the new steamboat; he wondered who his enemies could be, for the two men in the wagon were certainly enemies.

“What does it all mean--what does it all mean?” he murmured agonizedly time and time again, and then, parched with fever, he fell to sleep again.

The click of a lock awakened him. The door of the cell, a massive iron gate, swung open.

Dean groped his way to the threshold. Outside was a stone-paved corridor. A man in striped convict’s garb--the same who had unlocked the cell door--was the only occupant of the place.

At him Dean stared eagerly.

“Where am I? Is this a jail?” he cried.

For reply, the man placed his fingers to his lips to indicate silence.

“But I want to know!” gasped Dean.

The man pointed to a framed circular. His finger rested on a certain line.

Gazing at it, Dean read that it comprised the rules and regulations for the conduct of the prisoners in the State Reform School.

One line read:

“Any prisoner found conversing or signaling to others will be punished.”

And then were enumerated the various penalties for the offense and its repetition.

“The State Reform School?” gasped Dean, white with dread and suspense. “I am fifty miles away from Springfield!”

The convict interrupted his excited soliloquy by touching his shoulder and making a gesture that said:

“Follow me!”

Dean, thrilling with vague perturbation, accompanied him down the corridor. At its end the man unlocked the door and urged Dean over the threshold.

At a desk sat a man writing, but not in prison uniform. A second man caught Dean’s arm.

“New prisoner,” he said.

“What number?”

“No. 301.”

“Prisoner?” gasped Dean. “I am not----”

“Silence!” ordered the man at the desk, “or we’ll put you back in the dark cell.”

“But, sir----”

“You’ll have a chance to talk all you want to when you see the warden.”

“Better keep quiet!” spoke Dean’s companion in a low tone of warning.

Dean acted like a person in a dream. The truth had flashed over his mind with a rude shock.

Prisoner!

Prisoner, for what?

The man measured his height, weighed him, took a careful description of his personal appearance, and received from the man at the desk an iron check bearing the figures, in bronze:

“301.”

Then he led Dean to another door, opened it, pushed him though and handed the iron check to a man in the room.

The latter pointed to a barber’s chair. Dean groaned in anguish of spirit.

The man began to cut his hair close to his head. That done, he touched a bell, a man appeared, led Dean to another room, and here were a row of bath tubs.

Dean chafed under the terrible silence of the place. Everywhere that menacing printed order was displayed. When he emerged from the bath, to his surprise his own clothes had been replaced by a striped suit--the convict’s garb, such as the prisoners he had seen had worn.

“I won’t put them on!” he almost shrieked. “I must talk, if you kill me. I am no convict--no prisoner!”

His companion was as implacable as stone. He pointed once again to the clothes. There was a terrible shadow of severity in his face that awed Dean. He shuddered as at last he donned the coarse garments.

“For pity’s sake!” he gasped, “let me see the warden--anybody I can talk to. I shall go crazy if you don’t. It is all a mistake--I am no prisoner!”

The man handed Dean the iron check and pointed to a door.

Dean hastened to it, opened it and came face to face with a man whose bearing and garb pronounced him to be some well-fed, indifferent official of the place.

“Are you the warden?” queried Dean, trembling with the emotions of the moment.

The portly man scowled at Dean, glanced at the iron check, wrote something in a book, and said:

“Stand erect, eyes down. You are here to listen, not to speak. Pay attention!”

Poor Dean was nearly crying. He dared not speak. He decided to wait until the man had spoken. Then, he would appeal to him.

The warden read several pages from a well-thumbed book. They were the rules and regulations of the reform school. Dean scarcely comprehended their import.

“That’s your guide,” spoke the man finally as he closed the book. “You will find a copy in your cell. Behave yourself and you may win good-conduct time and privileges.”

“One word, sir!”

The warden had tapped a bell.

“Well, what is it?”

“I don’t understand it all, sir. I don’t know how I came here. I’m an honest, respectable boy----”

“Lower tier, north gallery!”

That was all the warden said. To him the frantic, incoherent words of Dean Mercer were but a repetition of those of every new, frightened inmate of the place.

“Oh, sir, please listen to me!”

“Boy, if you want the dark cell again, keep on breaking the rules,” interrupted the warden sternly.

Blinded with tears, staggering, anguished, Dean Mercer followed the convict the warden had summoned.

They went out into a large yard. Crossing it to a sombre-looking cell house, a man with a cane, who was watching a band of about twenty boys picking oakum, halted the convict.

“New prisoner?” he asked shortly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Let him work here then. We’re two short from sickness.”

Just then the prison noon bell rang.

Dean Mercer looked up at the man with the cane.

“Can I speak to you, sir?”

“What do you want?”

“I wish to send word----”

“Impossible.”

“Or write a letter----”

“’Gainst rules. Letter day in three weeks. Form ranks. March to your cells. Number 301, no dallying there, or we’ll put you in the solitary.”

A moan of anguish parted Dean Mercer’s lips, and then, like one doomed, he followed the prisoners with leaden steps--a convict.