honeymoon."

Disquieting visions of harsh prison punishments were oppressing me when
we reached the penitentiary and I was taken before the eagle-eyed old
Civil War veteran who had given me my parole. But the warden merely
put me through a shrewd questioning, inquiring closely into my
experiences as a paroled man, and making me tell him circumstantially
the story of my indictment, trial and conviction, and also the later
story of the mining experience in Colorado.

"I don't recall that you ever protested your innocence while you were
here serving your time, Weyburn," he commented, at the dose of the
inquisition.

"I didn't," I replied, wondering why he should go behind the returns to
remark the omission. Then I added: "They all do that, and it doesn't
change anything. You set it down as a lie--as it usually is."

"Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you are not lying to me
now?" he demanded.

I met the test soberly. "I can. I was convicted of a crime that I
didn't commit, and I broke my parole solely because that appeared to be
the one remaining alternative to becoming a criminal in fact."

The interview over, I expected to be put into stripes, cropped, and
sent to the workshops. But instead I was taken to one of the detention
cells, and for an interval which slowly lengthened itself into a week
was left a prey to all the devils of solitude. It seemed as if I had
been buried out of sight and forgotten. Three times a day a kitchen
"trusty" brought my meals and put them through the door wicket, but
apart from this I saw no one save the corridor guard, who never so much
as looked my way in his comings and goings.

That week of palsying, unnerving isolation got me. Consider it for a
moment. For a year I had been living at the very heart of life,
working, fighting, scheming, mixing and mingling, and succeeding--not
only in the money-winning, but also--until the Agatha Geddis incident
came along--in the field of good repute. At the last Agatha had set me
free, and Polly's love had opened the ultimate door of supreme
happiness; a joy so ecstatic that at the end of the honeymoon I was
only beginning to realize what it meant to me.

And then, on the very summit of the mountain of joy, had come the touch
of the deputy warden's hand on my shoulder in the Antlers dining-room.
That touch had swept the new-born world ruthlessly aside--all save
Polly's love and loyalty. Success had been blotted out with