Branded

st

train smoking-car. A glance at the railroad time-table which had been given me with my ticket proved that the train was well past the boundarie

rving out of the remainder of the full five-year term, with an added penalty for the broken parole. I knew well the critical watchfulness with which the workings of the new law were regarded. The in

submerged minority. It was doubtful if any one besides Kellow and the keeper of the police records would know or remember my name. There had been many tra

such conditions the smallness of the modern world has passed into a hackneyed proverb. I had scarcely rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and straigh

ed! Bert Weyburn-of all

fe; a rattle-brained young fellow named Barton, who had tried a dozen different occupations after leaving school,

ut of a worldful of men for a traveling companion; but before I could do more than nod a surly re

ottom of the sea. But Horace Barton was much too good-natured, and too loquacious, to let the constraint remain as a barrier. Working

ushed aside the awkwardnesses. "You've had pretty tough lines, I know; but that's no r

he train," I c

et you've got a few friends left in Glendale, right now, and y

s if he were afraid that a stop m

e in your fix, I believe I'd want to go and bully it out right where it happened. You've bought your little chunk of experience and paid for it,

ver, I was tormented to the verge of madness by the fear that the conductor might come along on a ticket-punching tour, and that by thi

lendale were the last place in the

take it all back; it's none of my business. Of course, you know best what

bout the indeterminate sentence and its terms, if, indeed, he-and the others-had ever known anything about its conditions. It

twisted the talk by thrust

few lines since you knew us, and I've been making a round of the agencies. I was in the big city last night and got a wire to go to St. Louis. The wire got balled up so

arton with me all day. Returning to Glendale at the end of his round, he would be sure to talk, and in due time the prison authorities would l

r, and I hoped this would relieve me of Barton's presence, for a w

" was his welcoming of the waiter's sing-song call. "Come al

dition to present myself in the dining-car. I showed him my grimy hands, and at t

wash up. I've got a bunch of clean collars and a shirt, if you want them; and if the Pullman man makes a roar I'll tell him you're my long-lost brother and give him the best ten-cent cigar he ever smoked-I g

n from home; a man who knew, and apparently didn't care. I went to the Pullman with Barton and was lucky enough to meet the ticket-punching train cond

l-groomed may never realize the importance of soap and water in a civilized world. As a moral stimulus, the combination yields nothing to all the Uplift Foundations the multi-millionaires have ever laid. When I took my place at t

various happenings in the little town during my long absence. Though I had quartered the home S

the income from the farm enabled them to retain. For several years after her majority my sister, older than I, had taug

new mayor; Buck Severance, my one-time chum in the High School, was now chief of the fire department, having won his spurs

bank?"

e of them now, if you plea

he Farmers

rm mortgages and note-shaving at the old stand, same as usual, but it's got a hoodoo. The other banks do most of the commerc

s married

just how or why-shortly after your-er-shortly after the trouble at the bank three years and a half ago. Agath

the picture of health. I put up a fervent little prayer that her particular sanitorium mig

bank trouble before they burie

at Geddis and Withers hadn't done a thing but to quietly unload their bank stock here and there and everywhere, until they held only enough to give them their votes. There was a yell to raise the roof, but the stockholders of record had to come across. It teetotally smashed a round dozen

e trick by means of which Geddis, or both of them, had shifted the defalcation loss to other shoulders proved two things conclusively: that the scheme had been well planned for i

the mining sto

aid. Nobody wanted it, of course; and then, to be right large-hearted a

ddis is still r

, just to help their neighbors out of a hole, as they put it, the two old skinflints went around buying it back. I don't know what they paid; different prices,

gel with wings compared with these two old Pharisees who had deliberately robbed their friends and neighbors, catching them both coming and going. And ye

rambling on about people in whom I was most deeply interested. It was like a

to push my wretched life-catastrophe a little way into the background, I had a glimpse of a new face at the farther end of the dining-car. A large-framed man with

For three long and weary years I had seen him dally in the office of the Sta