s o' the world nipped the paper."

"See here, Dorgan; was that why you followed me to town this
afternoon?" I shot at him.

"Ye've guessed it."

"And it was for the same reason that you sneaked in here while I was
asleep?"

"Ye've guessed it ag'in."

"You didn't want the bosses to be robbed?"

The escaped convict had his face propped between his hands with his
elbows resting on his knees.

"I'm thinkin' maybe it's six o' one and a half-dozen o' tother," he
said soberly. "I wasn't carin' so damned much about the bosses, square
as they've been to me. But I puts it up like this: here's you, and
you'd spotted me, and you hadn't snitched; you'd been in 'stir'
yourself, and knowed what it was: d'ye see?"

I smiled in the darkness. It was the brotherhood of the underworld.

"And you lined up square at the finish, too, as I knowed yous would,"
he went on. "You sees me pipin' yous off in town, and you was thinkin'
maybe I'd drop in here to-night and crack this old box f'r the swag
there'd be in it. You laid f'r me alone, because yit you wouldn't be
willin' to give me up. Ain't that the size of it, pally?"

"You've guessed it," I said, handing his own words back to him. "And
now one more question, Dorgan: have you quit the crooked business for
keeps?"

He was up and moving toward the open window when he replied.

"Who the hell would know that? I was a railroad man, pally, before I
took to the road. These days I'm eatin' my t'ree squares and sleepin'
good. But some fine mornin' a little man that I could break in halves
wit' my two hands 'll come dancin' along wit' a paper in his pocket and
a gun in his fist; and then it'll be all over but the shoutin'--or the
fun'ral. There's on'y the one sure thing about it, pally: I'll not be
goin' back to 'stir'--not alive; d'ye see? So long . . . don't let
them ducks get loose on yous and come at yous fr'm behind, whilst maybe
you'd be dozin' off."

And with this parting injunction he was gone.

XII

A Cast for Fortune

The incident of the frustrated safe robbery was an incident closed, so
far as any difference in Dorgan's attitude toward me was concerned, at
the moment when he disappeared through the open window of the
pay-office. For the next two or three weeks I saw him only as he
chanced to drop into the commissary of an evening; and upon such
occasions he ignored me absolutely.

Only once more while the work of branch-line building continued did w