s for me to try to picture the consternation which fell
upon the four of us when the deputy warden touched me on the shoulder
and spoke to me. I can't describe it. I only know that Barrett sprang
up, gritting out the first oath I had ever heard him utter; that a look
of shocked and complete recognition leaped into the mild brown eyes of
the old metallurgist; that Polly was standing up with her arms
outstretched across the table as if she were trying to reach me and
drag me out of the crushing wreck of all our hopes.

When he found that I was not going to offer any resistance, Cummings
was very decent--not to say kindly. He let me walk with the others out
of the dining-room; made no show of his authority in the rotunda or at
the elevators to point me out as a prisoner; and in the up-stairs room
to which he took me, pending the departure-time of the earliest
eastbound train, he let me see and talk, first with Barrett, and
afterward with my wife.

In this most trying exigency Barrett proved to be all that my fancy had
ever pictured the truest of friends. His first word assured me that he
meant to stand by me to the last ditch, and I knew it was the word of a
man who never knew when he was beaten. While Cummings smoked a cigar
in the window-seat I told Barrett the whole pitiful story, beginning
with the night when I had promised Agatha Geddis that I would pull her
father out of the hole he had digged for himself and ending with my
appearance in the Cripple Creek construction camp.

Barrett believed the story, and I didn't have to wait for him to tell
me so. I could see it in his eyes.

"Jimmie!" he said, wringing my hand as if he would crush it, "you've
got the two of us behind you--I'm speaking for Gifford because I know
exactly what he will say. We'll spend every dollar that ever comes out
of the Little Clean-Up, if needful, to buy you justice! But I wish you
had told me all this before; and, more than that, I wish you had told
Polly."

"My God, Bob!" I groaned; "don't rub it in!" And then I told him
brokenly how I had known Polly as a little girl in Glendale, and how I
was certain that her father had more than once been on the verge of
recognizing me. Then, in such fashion as I could, I made my will, or
tried to, telling him that Polly must have her freedom, and that he
must help her get it, and that my share in the mine must go to her.

"It is the only return I can make her for the deception I have put u