up," and disappear in the gas and smoke with the
empty cars rumbling behind him. It was a long time before he came out,
but he brought ten insensible convicts in his first haul. The lessees
recommended him for that, and promised to make it good sometime if he
kept on at that rate.

Another time there was a fire. The rumbling old rat-hole was
threatened with destruction, and with it three hundred and
seventy-five of the State's charges. The men glared like beasts
through the cracks of the tottering stockade. Liberty, it would come
surely in some form. The fire was confined for a time to the wing
where the hospital was. But when it mounted in a great blood-dappled
sheet of flame to the top of an old rotten tower above the main
building, where the prisoners were huddled, it became evident that all
must go unless the old tower could be torn away. Up the uneven,
rickety wall went Jim, nimble as a squirrel. Crack! crack! fell the
dead boards, then with a clang and clamor, down rolled the old bell
from its perch, carrying with it the last of the burning tower.

Jim climbed down as sullen as ever. He didn't care to save the old
shanty, or to win any praise from anybody. He was simply not afraid,
and his courage would not permit him to do other than what he did.

Nobody cared for him specially, although the soft-voiced man with the
small, womanish hands spoke to him often, and always kindly. Jim never
forgot that he had called him friend. The memory of it stayed with
him, like the kiss of a first love that lingers long after love is
dead. Most of the men were afraid of him, so fierce was his temper,
and so easily aroused. Even the warden had learned that he could not
tame him. The strap, the lash, the pool, the pump, had been applied
times without number. The warden was still "looking around" for the
time to apply the last resource, the shotgun. It was pretty sure to
come, for the boy was entirely "unscrupulous."

Summer set in again. Again June came, and tried to bloom even on the
coal-tracked mountain about the mine. Somewhere up back among the pine
and shadows the wild roses were blooming, and the grapes. Their odors
came down to the men as they tramped across the hot, bare, coal-strewn
way between the stockade and the mines.

With the coming of June came a number of strangers to the mountain.
They always came in the warm season, but they quartered themselves
over in the town, beyond the stockade, and the stench, and fi