in his eyes he watched the rosy-cheeked, romping children,
while at the same time revolting pictures of his own misspent life and
thoughts of the far worse to-be-spent future, and the fact that he had
been heretofore his own worst enemy came so strongly to his mind that
he could barely keep himself from sobbing.

From that evening when he for the first time in his whole life, studied
the life of a yegg from a commonsense and strictly commercial side and
found it in all its phases a losing game, dated the desire to quit the
life of crime when the first opportunity presented itself, but whenever
he tried to picture himself as having a happy home of his own, there,
like a black cloud suspended in a blue sky, came to him the knowledge
that never more could he hide his past, for from the moment that he
should endeavor to walk the narrow path, every yegg in the land would
point to him as a former brother-in-crime, and gossiping tongues would
quickly force him back into the fold, even while with his calloused
hands he would be toiling to earn an honest living.

While all of these pictures of his past flashed through his active mind
and the desire to be for just one time, a man who needed not to be
afraid to associate with honest people, he attentively listened to the
boy who was just now unfolding his plans for a bright future, and who
was telling about his section home by the side of the railroad track in
the midst of the endless prairies of the Dakotas, and although he
described the siding of Rugby as being a most desolate place, the desire
to reform became almost irresistible to Slippery when Joe told how every
evening the railroad laborers returned to their humble quarters worn and
tired out by the hard toil of the day, but happy with the satisfaction
that by performing their task they had added their share to the world's
work for the common good of all humanity.

This was the boy of whose most unwelcome company only a few minutes
before Slippery had wished to rid himself as he considered him a serious
handicap to his career as a professional criminal, and who was now
telling of his plans, how he wished to atone by leading an honest life
for the wrong he had done to his widowed mother by leaving his home
without her consent, and as he continued to speak of his hopes of a
clean and glorious living, the same queer feeling that had attacked him
before came with ever increasing force over Slippery, and it almost
stunned him