



Produced by David Widger






RED HEAD AND WHISTLE BREECHES

By Ellis Parker Butler

It is believed that this little story by a master story teller, may,
through its human interest and homely suggestion, exert a wholesome
influence and warrant its publication in permanent form.

The Publishers.

With Illustrations By Arthur D. Puller

The Bancroft Company Publishers New York

1915

[Illustration: Frontispiece]





RED HEAD AND WHISTLE BREECHES




I.

When Tim Murphy let his enthusiasm get the better of his judgment and,
in the excitement of that disastrous night, joined the front rank of the
strikers in a general mix-up and cracked the head of a deputy
sheriff, the result was what he might have expected--two years in the
penitentiary. That was all right. The peace of the commonwealth must
be preserved, and that is why laws and penitentiaries exist, but it
sometimes goes hard with the mothers and wives. That is also to be
expected, and the boy should have thought of it before he crowded to the
front of the angry mob or struck the deputy.

It went very hard with the boy's mother and wife. It went hard with
his old man, too. It is a cruel thing to have one's only boy in the
penitentiary, even if one is only a village hod carrier.

Maggie Murphy, the boy's wife, did not suffer for food or shelter after
the boy went to wear stripes, for old Mike had a handy little roll in
the bank and a shanty of his own, and he took Maggie into his home and
made a daughter of her; but the girl grew thin and had no spirits. She
cried a good part of the time, quite as if Tim had been a law abiding
citizen, instead of a law breaking rowdy. Then the baby came, and after
that she cried more than ever.

As for the boy's mother, it was to be expected that she would weep also.
Mothers have a way of weeping over the son they love, even if he has
gone wrong. It is not logical, but it is a fact. It is one of the grand
facts of human life.

When Maggie's baby came the boy's mother could stand it no longer. It
had been urged--and there was some evidence to support it--that the boy
had acted in self-defense. He said so himself, but he admitted he had
been in the front rank. The strikers had carried things with a high hand
all along, and the jury had decided against him.

Night and day the boy's mother begged the old man to try for a pardon,
but Mike knew it was not worth a trial. The Governor was an old man and
a strong man, and not one to forgive an injury done to the State or to
himself. He had never been known to forget a wrong, or to leave a debt
unpaid.

He was a just man, as the ancient Jews were just. It was this that had
made him Governor; his righteousness and fearlessness were greater than
cliques and bosses.

Old Mrs. Murphy, however, was only a woman, and the boy was her boy,
and she pardoned him. She knew he was innocent, for he was her boy. Mike
refused a thousand times to ask the Governor for a pardon, but as
Mrs. Murphy was the boy's mother and had a valiant tongue, the old man
changed his mind. One day he put on his old silk hat, and with Father
Maurice, the good gray priest, went up to the capital.

A strange pair they were to sit in the Governor's richly furnished
reception room--Mike with his smoothly shaven face, red as the sunset,
his snowy eye brows, his white flecked red hair, and the shiny black of
his baggy Sunday suit; Father Maurice with his long gray beard that
had been his before the days of the smoothly shaven priests, his kindly
eyes, and the jolly rotundity of his well fed stomach. The father's
gentle heart was hopeful, but Mike sat sadly with his eyes on the toe
of his boot, for he knew the errand was folly; not alone because the
Governor had never pardoned a condemned man, but because it was he, Mike
Murphy, who came.

He remembered an incident of his boyhood, and he frowned as he recalled
it. Think of it! He, Mike Murphy, had bullied the Governor--had drubbed
him and chased him and worried the life out of him. That was why he had
told the old woman it was no use to try it.

Who was he to come asking pardons when, years ago