cal managers, and with
the few authentic Christians who occasionally strayed into the place and
seemed ill at ease therein. He had liked this club for another reason;
his sense of humor had often been highly excited by the thought of his
being a member of the Y.M.C.A.

Having this instinct for physical fitness, he had not greatly minded
being a coal-passer during the greater part of his stay at Sing Sing;
better that than working in the knitting mills; so that now, though
underfed and under weight, he was active and hard-muscled.

Larry Brainard could not have told why, and just when, he had turned
to devious ways. He had never put that part of his life under the
microscope. But the simple facts were that he had become an orphan at
fifteen and a broker's clerk at nineteen after a course in a business
college; and that experiences with wash-sales and such devious and
dubious practices of brokers, his high spirits, his instinct for
pleasure, his desire for big winnings--these had swept him into a wild
crowd before he had been old enough to take himself seriously, and
had started him upon a brilliant career of adventures and unlawful
money-making in whose excitement there had been no let-up until his
arrest. He had never thought about such technical and highly academic
subjects as right and wrong up to the day when Casey and Gavegan had
slipped the handcuffs upon him. To laugh, to dance, to plan and direct
clever coups, to spend the proceeds gayly and lavishly--to challenge the
police with another daring coup: that had been life to him, a game that
was all excitement.

And now, after two years in which there had been plenty of time for
thinking, his conscience still did not trouble him on the score of his
offenses. He believed, and was largely right in this belief, that the
suckers he had trimmed had all been out to secure unlawful gain and
to take cunning advantage of his supposedly foolish self and of other
dupes. He had been too clever for them, that was all; in desire and
intent they had been as great cheats as himself. So he felt no remorse
over his victims; and as for anything he may have done against that
impersonal entity, the criminal statutes, why, the period in prison
had squared all such matters. So he now faced life pleasantly and with
care-free soul.

Larry had turned away from the dark river and had started to retrace his
way, when he saw a man approaching through the darkness. Larry paused.
The man dre