the law's
disgrace.

Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a
cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old
thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading
on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.

He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to
look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped
into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.

Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled
back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when
the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible
scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform,
and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!

Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served
their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of
public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o'
'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker,
look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother
Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just
tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way
again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to
suppress such jesting.

Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with
what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.

Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a
government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.

The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder
repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at
bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But
he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's
dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the
warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.

They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train
stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the
carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He
disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the
anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh