The Code of the Mountains — Charles Neville Buck

Governor could not erase. A sunken grave bore testimony in a steep mountainside burial-ground back in Bloody Breathitt, where dead weed stalks rattled and tangled ropes of fox-grapes bore their fruit in due season. However, even the name of Newt Spooner is a better thing than the Number 813, which for two years had been his designation within those gray and fortressed walls along whose tops sentry-boxes punctuated the angles. This morning he wore a suit of black clothes, the gift of the commonwealth, and his eyes were fixed rather avidly on a five-dollar note which the warden held tightly between his thumb and forefinger. Newt knew that the bill, too, was to be his. Yet the warden seemed needlessly deliberate in making the presentation. That functionary intended first to have something to say; something meant in all kindliness, but as Newt waited, shifting his bulk uneasily from foot to foot, his narrowed eyes traveled with restlessness, and his thin lips clamped themselves into a line indicative of neither gratitude nor penitence. The convicts thoughts for two years had been circling with uncomplicated directness about one focus. Newt Spooner had a fixed idea. The office of the warden was not a cheery place. I ts walls and desk and key-racks spoke suggestively of the business administered there.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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