"For God's sake, let me go" — Illustration for *Gallegher and Other Stories*

Gibson's pen-and-ink drawing illustrates Richard Harding Davis's story collection Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), capturing the arrest of the fugitive Hade. Three figures crowd a shadowed doorway: a plainclothes detective in a bowler hat grips Hade — an older man in a heavy overcoat, expression stricken with desperation — while young Gallegher, the newsboy-hero in his workingman's cap, watches from the left, fist raised in triumph. The composition funnels dramatic tension into the doorway's darkness, Gibson using dense crosshatching to suggest gaslit urban menace. The image captures Davis's sympathy for street-smart youth outfoxing corrupt adult society — a theme congenial to 1890s reform journalism.