only because he was shrewd enough to appreciate the fact that he
was bringing the day of release nearer by piling up "good-conduct" time.

"Well, pinch me! Look who's here!" was his greeting when we met on the
bridge.

For a silent moment it was I who did the looking. Kellow had grown a
pair of curling black mustaches since his release; he was well-dressed,
erect and alert, and was smoking a cigar the fragrance of which made me
sick and faint with an attack of the long-denied tobacco hunger.

"You're out, too, are you?" I managed to say at last, shivering in the
cold blast which came sweeping up the river.

"Three months, and then some," he returned jauntily. "I'm collecting a
little on the old debt now, and doing fairly well at it, thank you."

"The old debt?" I queried.

"Yep; the one that the little old round world owes every man: three
squares, a tailor, a bed and a pocket-roll."

"You look as if you had acquired all four," I agreed, setting my jaw to
keep my teeth from chattering.

"Sure I have; and you look as if you hadn't," he countered. And then:
"What's the matter? Just plain hard luck? Or is it the parole scare?"

"Both," I admitted.

He shot me a quick look.

"I can put you onto a dead sure thing, if you're game for it. Let's
hunt us a warm place and chew it over."

The place was the back room of an all-night saloon in the slum quarter
beyond the bridge. It was warm, stiflingly warm and close, after the
outdoor blast and chill, and it reeked like a sty. Kellow kicked out a
chair for me and drew up one for himself on the opposite side of the
small round card-table over which a single gas-jet hissed and sizzled,
lighting the tiny box of a place with a sickly yellow glare.

"What'll it be?" he asked, when the waiter came in.

"A piece of bread and meat from the lunch counter, if you don't mind,"
I said; and then, in an apology for which I instantly despised myself:
"Liquor doesn't agree with me lately; it--it would gag me."

Kellow ordered whiskey for himself, and after the waiter was gone he
stared at me contemptuously.

"So it's come to that, has it?" he derided. "You're so damned hungry
you're afraid to put a drop of bug-juice under your belt. You're a
fool, Weyburn. I know what you've been doing, just as well as if you'd
told me the whole story. Also, I'll believe now what I didn't believe
while we were in 'stir'; you were pinched for something you didn't do."

"Well?" I sai