y in the library. You can't ask me to be fairer with you than that.
Besides, you're not squealing on anybody. You are the only person in San
Quentin who knows where the dynamite is. You won't hurt anybody's
feelings by giving in, and you'll be all to the good from the moment you
do give in. And if you don't--"

He paused and shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"Well, if you don't, you start in the ten days right now."

The prospect was terrifying. So weak was I that I was as certain as the
Warden was that it meant death in the jacket. And then I remembered
Morrell's trick. Now, if ever, was the need of it; and now, if ever, was
the time to practise the faith of it. I smiled up in the face of Warden
Atherton. And I put faith in that smile, and faith in the proposition I
made to him.

"Warden," I said, "do you see the way I am smiling? Well, if, at the end
of the ten days, when you unlace me, I smile up at you in the same way,
will you give a sack of Bull Durham and a package of brown papers to
Morrell and Oppenheimer?"

"Ain't they the crazy ginks, these college guys," Captain Jamie snorted.

Warden Atherton was a choleric man, and he took my request for insulting
braggadocio.

"Just for that you get an extra cinching," he informed me.

"I made you a sporting proposition, Warden," I said quietly. "You can
cinch me as tight as you please, but if I smile ten days from now will
you give the Bull Durham to Morrell and Oppenheimer?"

"You are mighty sure of yourself," he retorted.

"That's why I made the proposition," I replied.

"Getting religion, eh?" he sneered.

"No," was my answer. "It merely happens that I possess more life than
you can ever reach the end of. Make it a hundred days if you want, and
I'll smile at you when it's over."

"I guess ten days will more than do you, Standing."

"That's your opinion," I said. "Have you got faith in it? If you have
you won't even lose the price of the two five-cents sacks of tobacco.
Anyway, what have you got to be afraid of?"

"For two cents I'd kick the face off of you right now," he snarled.

"Don't let me stop you." I was impudently suave. "Kick as hard as you
please, and I'll still have enough face left with which to smile. In the
meantime, while you are hesitating, suppose you accept my original
proposition."

A man must be terribly weak and profoundly desperate to be able, under
such circumstances, to beard the Warden in solitary. O