e notorious West Side rowdy, "Billy" Byrne, apprehended after more
than a year as fugitive from justice, is sent to Joliet for life.

Barbara Harding sat stony-eyed and cold for what seemed many minutes.
Then with a stifled sob she turned and buried her face in the pillows.

The train bearing Billy Byrne and the deputy sheriff toward Joliet had
covered perhaps half the distance between Chicago and Billy's permanent
destination when it occurred to the deputy sheriff that he should like
to go into the smoker and enjoy a cigar.

Now, from the moment that he had been sentenced Billy Byrne's mind had
been centered upon one thought--escape. He knew that there probably
would be not the slightest chance for escape; but nevertheless the idea
was always uppermost in his thoughts.

His whole being revolted, not alone against the injustice which had
sent him into life imprisonment, but at the thought of the long years of
awful monotony which lay ahead of him.

He could not endure them. He would not! The deputy sheriff rose, and
motioning his prisoner ahead of him, started for the smoker. It was two
cars ahead. The train was vestibuled. The first platform they crossed
was tightly enclosed; but at the second Billy saw that a careless porter
had left one of the doors open. The train was slowing down for some
reason--it was going, perhaps, twenty miles an hour.

Billy was the first upon the platform. He was the first to see the open
door. It meant one of two things--a chance to escape, or, death. Even
the latter was to be preferred to life imprisonment.

Billy did not hesitate an instant. Even before the deputy sheriff
realized that the door was open, his prisoner had leaped from the moving
train dragging his guard after him.

CHAPTER II. THE ESCAPE

BYRNE had no time to pick any particular spot to jump for. When he did
jump he might have been directly over a picket fence, or a bottomless
pit--he did not know. Nor did he care.

As it happened he was over neither. The platform chanced to be passing
across a culvert at the instant. Beneath the culvert was a slimy pool.
Into this the two men plunged, alighting unharmed.

Byrne was the first to regain his feet. He dragged the deputy sheriff to
his knees, and before that frightened and astonished officer of the law
could gather his wits together he had been relieved of his revolver and
found himself looking into its cold and business-like muzzle.

Then Billy Byrne waded a