TINMAN

By
TOM GALLON

Author of "Jarwick the Prodigal," "Tatterly," etc., etc.

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
MCMVII.

Contents

PART I

CHAPTER I
WHAT I FOUND IN THE WOOD

In all that I shall set down here, in telling the strange story of my poor life, I shall write nothing but the truth. It has been written in many odd times and in many odd places: in a prison cell, on paper stamped with the prison mark; on odd scraps of paper in a lonely garret under the stars, with a candle-end for light—and I, poor and old and shivering—scrawling hastily because the time was so short. I have been at once the meanest and the greatest of all men; the meanest—because all men shuddered at the mere mention of my name, and at the thought of what I had done; the greatest—because one woman loved me, and taught me that beyond that nothing else mattered. I have lived in God's sunlight, and in the sunlight of her eyes; I have gone down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and have not been afraid; I have been caged like a wild beast, until I forgot the world, just as the world forgot me. In a mere matter of the counting of years I am but little past forty years of age; yet I am an old man, and I have lived two lives—just as, when my time comes, I shall have died two deaths. I have touched the warm lips of Love; I have clasped the gaunt hands of Misery. I have warmed both hands at the fire of Life; but now the fire has gone out, and only the cold grey ashes remain. But of all that you may