Mr. Moriway?"

I can see his face yet, Mag, and every time I think of it, it makes me
nearly die of laughing. He had actually been fooled another time. It
was worth the trip up there, to make a guy of him once more.

And whether it was or not, Mag, it was all I got, after all. For--would
you believe Tom Dorgan would turn out such a sorehead? He's kicked up
such a row ever since he got there, that it's the dark cell for him,
and solitary confinement. Think of it--for Tom!

I begged, I bluffed, I cried, I coaxed, but many's the Nance Olden that
has played her game against the rules of Sing Sing, and lost. They
wouldn't even let me leave the things for him, or give him a message
from me. And back to the station I had to carry the basket, and all
the schemes I had to make old Tom Dorgan grin.

All the way back I had him in my mind. He's a tiger--Tom--when he's
roused. I could see him, shut up there by himself, with not a soul to
talk to, with not a human eye to look into, with not a thing on earth
to do--Tom, who's action itself! He never was much of a thinker, and I
never saw him read even a newspaper. What would he do to kill the
time? Can't you see him there, at bay, back on his haunches, cursing
and cursed, alone in the everlasting black silence?

I saw nothing else. Wherever I turned my eyes, that terrible picture
was before me. And always it was just on the verge of becoming
something else--something worse. He could throttle the world with his
bare hands, if it had but one neck, in the mood he must be in now.

It was when I couldn't bear it a moment longer that I set my mind to
find something else to think of.

I found it, Mag. Do you know what it was? It was just three
words--of Obermuller's: "Earn it now."

After all, Miss Monahan, this graft of honesty they all preach so much
about hasn't anything mysterious in it. All it is, is putting your
wits to work according to the rules of the game and not against them.
I was driven to it--the thought of big Tom crouching for a spring in
the dark cell up yonder sent me whirling out into the thinking place,
like the picture of the soul in the big book at Latimer's I read out
of. And first thing you know, 'pon honor, Mag, it was as much fun
planning how to "earn it now" as any lifting I ever schemed. It's
getting the best of people that always charmed me--and here was a way
to fool 'em according to law.

So busy I was making it all up, that the tra