"

"You'd like that; wouldn't you?" said Bolton dryly.

He leaned forward and stared the young man in the eyes.

"But she wouldn't have it that way. Do you know that girl of mine
wouldn't hear of it. She expects to make it up to me.... Imagine
making up eighteen years of hell with a few pet names, a soft bed
and--"

"Stop!" cried Wesley Elliot, with a gesture of loathing. "I can't
listen to you."

"But you'll marry her--eh?"

Bolton's voice again dropped into a whining monotone. He even smiled
deprecatingly.

"You'll excuse my ranting a bit, sir. It's natural after what I've
gone through. You've never been in a prison, maybe. And you don't
know what it's like to shake the bars of a cell at midnight and howl
out of sheer madness to be off and away--somewhere, anywhere!"

He leaned forward and touched the minister on the knee.

"And that brings me back to my idea in coming to see you. I'm a
level-headed man, still--quite cool and collected, as you see--and
I've been thinking the situation over."

He drew his brows together and stared hard at the minister.

"I've a proposition to make to you--as man to man. Can't talk reason
to a woman; there's no reason in a woman's make-up--just sentiment
and affection and imagination: an impossible combination, when there
are hard realities to face.... I see you don't agree with me; but
never mind that; just hear what I have to say."

But he appeared in no haste to go on, for all the eagerness of his
eyes and those pallid, restless hands. The minister got quickly to
his feet. The situation was momentarily becoming intolerable; he must
have time to think it over, he told himself, and determine his own
relations to this new and unwelcome parishioner.

"I'm very sorry, sir," he began; "but--"

"None of that," growled Bolton. "Sit down, young man, and listen to
what I have to say to you. We may not have another chance like this."

His assumption of a common interest between them was most
distasteful; but for all that the minister resumed his chair.

"Now, as I've told you, my daughter appears unwilling to allow me out
of her sight. She tries to cover her watchfulness under a pretense of
solicitude for my health. I'm not well, of course; was knocked down
and beaten about the head by one of those devils in the prison--
Can't call them men: no decent man would choose to earn his living
that way. But cosseting and coddling in a warm house will never
restore me. I want freed