me that I was wanted
in the contractors' office, a little shack at the far side of the
end-of-track cantonments. Hadley, the senior member of the firm, was
alone when I showed myself at the door.

"Come in, Bertrand," he invited, gruffly genial; "come in and wait a
minute until I go over this estimate again. You'll find cigars in that
box on the bunk."

Having nothing to do while I waited, I sat on a stool in a corner of
the shack, smoking the gift cigar and silently regarding the man who
had sent for me. He was a good example of the better type of Western
contractor and out-door man; big-bodied, burly, whiskered like a miner,
a keen driver on the work, but withal as kindly as a father when
kindness was called for.

In due time he pushed the figuring pad aside and turned to me. "Drag
up your stool, Jim; I want to talk to you," he began. And then: "How
much experience have you had in keeping accounts?"

I told him briefly.

"In a bank, eh?" he queried, and I knew precisely what he was thinking.
He was wondering what I had done to break myself. In spite of all that
had happened or might happen, I believe I was ready to tell him; but to
my astonishment the curt questioning which all my previous experience
had taught me to expect at this stage of the game did not come.

"This is a free country, Bertrand," he said, looking me squarely in the
eye. "I'm not going to ask you why you quit bank bookkeeping to come
out here and swing a pick in a construction camp. Here in the tall
hills we don't think much of digging up graves--the graves of any man's
past. You've done well in every job we've tried you at, and that's all
to the good for you."

I said I had tried to fill the bill as well as I knew how, and he took
me up promptly.

"We know you have; and that brings on more talk. Kenniston is leaving
us to go prospecting. We've talked it over--Shelton and I--and you're
to have the paymaster's job. Think you can hold it down?"

"I am sure I can--so far as the routine duties are concerned. But----"

Never, in all the soul-killing experiences of the parole period, had I
been confronted with a test so gripping. Would this large-hearted man
turn the keys of his money chest over to me if he knew I were an
ex-convict, liable at any moment to be re-arrested for having broken my
parole? I was silent so long that he began again.

"Looking around for a spade to begin the grave-digging?" he asked, with
a sober smile