IDEAL OF FAITH

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 38, 8 November 1937, Page 14

IDEAL OF FAITH

Prisoner Makes Shrine of His Cell THE GIRL WHO WAITED Of the poignant dramas that soxneitimes remain obscured by the shadow of gaol walls . that concerning young A1Cred John Dillon is partieularly moving. Dillon^ ' whose Telease from Emu Plains prison farm has just been granted, hilled a gangster who had xelentlessly and brutally been preying upon his mother. That was six years ago. He was sentenced to 13 years' penal servitude, after a second trial. Just six years ago he converted his cell into a shrine. He attached a pennanfc, bearing his school motto, to the wall, beneath portraits of his mother and his girl. Hb built a littlc wooden frame to en shrine the ideal of faith. * Just six years ago, too, the girl he will shortly marry paid her first tremulous call on him on visiting day. She has not missed a visitor'a day since. It is a long way for a city girl to go to Emu Plains each Saturday afternoon but she arrived there as inevitably as the gong announcing the prisoners' temporary liberty. Always she carried a bag of fruit or a package of cigarettes. That was another reason why Dillon bowed so f ervently each night and morning at his shrine, in one of the tidiest huts at Emu Plains. Model Prisoner. He was regarded as a model prisoner, He never complained; 5 he never asked for concessions; and his work showed not only exacting efficiency, but considerable enterprise. In-charge of the poultry s.ection, he kept copperplate records, and, by newly, discovered methods, increased produc-. tion tremendously. Just before the order for his release eame, he was down on his stomach among dozens of chicks, trying to discern, amid such a volume of sound, the squeaks of sick chicks. Dillon's manliness, bearing, and courtesy made a stirring appeal to prison officials. Though he never pleaded justiflcation for his act, this 27-year-old, erect, pur'poseful, blue-eyed young man will have many sympathisers when he takos his place in. life aghin besido the staunch little helpmate, who has waited so long for him. They will leave for another State as soon as they are married.