d not help being what he was, a fatherly, kindly
old man, having faith in those shibboleths of the weak and inexperienced
mentally--human justice and human decency.

"Yes, I'm here, Mr. Chapin," Cowperwood replied, simply, remembering his
name from the attendant, and flattering the keeper by the use of it.

To old Chapin the situation was more or less puzzling. This was the
famous Frank A. Cowperwood whom he had read about, the noted banker and
treasury-looter. He and his co-partner in crime, Stener, were destined
to serve, as he had read, comparatively long terms here. Five hundred
thousand dollars was a large sum of money in those days, much more
than five million would have been forty years later. He was awed by the
thought of what had become of it--how Cowperwood managed to do all
the things the papers had said he had done. He had a little formula of
questions which he usually went through with each new prisoner--asking
him if he was sorry now for the crime he had committed, if he meant to
do better with a new chance, if his father and mother were alive,
etc.; and by the manner in which they answered these questions--simply,
regretfully, defiantly, or otherwise--he judged whether they were being
adequately punished or not. Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as
he now saw or as he would to the average second-story burglar,
store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief and swindler. And yet he
scarcely knew how else to talk.

"Well, now," he went on, "I don't suppose you ever thought you'd get to
a place like this, did you, Mr. Cowperwood?"

"I never did," replied Frank, simply. "I wouldn't have believed it a few
months ago, Mr. Chapin. I don't think I deserve to be here now, though
of course there is no use of my telling you that."

He saw that old Chapin wanted to moralize a little, and he was only too
glad to fall in with his mood. He would soon be alone with no one to
talk to perhaps, and if a sympathetic understanding could be reached
with this man now, so much the better. Any port in a storm; any straw to
a drowning man.

"Well, no doubt all of us makes mistakes," continued Mr. Chapin,
superiorly, with an amusing faith in his own value as a moral guide and
reformer. "We can't just always tell how the plans we think so fine are
coming out, can we? You're here now, an' I suppose you're sorry certain
things didn't come out just as you thought; but if you had a chance I
don't suppose you'd try to do just as