THE BOY ON THE CHAIN-GANG.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4810, 9 June 1884, Page 3

THE BOY ON THE CHAIN-GANG.

They were woiking right in frontof Ihr hotel at a little hamlet in Alabama —thr chnin-gang. There wire nine villainouslooking mcD, each wearing shackles and having no shame as Ihey looked into the faces of the strangers on the' verandah. A chain-gang is an every-day sight in thf South, and few people waste sympathy upon the justly punished wretches, but all of a sudden soruethinu happened in this gang never to be forgotten. A boy not ■ yet 14 yr-srs old chdim up with a pail o 1 water, and wo saw that he belonged to the chain-gang. Larceny had sent him to associate with those villains for three lot;;.' years. He looked pale and broken down, and his shame compelled him to avert his face as he enme up. .It was a sad sk'ht to see a tot of a boy like him brought out ■ and degraded and disgraced, and he fell the situation so keenly that at the first kind word from the platform the tears welled up and blinded his eyes. There was a woman ther« from -Indiana who walked straight down to the boy and put her hand on his head 1 and shed tears with him. There must have been something in his look to remind her of some i . oue~perbaps a son at home or one under the sod. Her hear: nas full of sorrow and sympathy, and her words broke the lad down. This lasted' four or five minutes, io the great astonishment and annoyance of the armed guard in charge. Tho lightning - express coming 'down the road had just whistled, and the iron rails were quivering under the approaching thunder, when the 1 guaid called out: A 1 Come, you young thief, get back after Sjore water!'" •■ ' The vcdrai} started back at the words, dragging th' child vrith her,' but in an iosfcani he ./broke" °<a«a^s-«}ieoled\ anct clasped heriand and kissed it ( Web (b"e,n" "what? Jot a hand could have, been* lifted to pjevent it. The'express'was thunderingup at forty miles au.honr, not intending fo make a stop here, and the lad turned from the w.oman whose kind/words had opemd the well springs of his heart, and at ths some time horrified him at his situation, and with one spring 1 c alighted in front of the locomotive. Next instant

his crushed and mangled body was flung into the roadside dilcb, and hehad served ' his sentence. \W.e.pieked him up tenderly, and tl» woman wept over him as they !■ washe«i the pale face and folded the boyhandsover 1 the crushed and broken-breast, but ttfeiad was beyond tbo ceed of earthly friends.—American paper.