The Sky Line of Spruce

green with growing barley. The air was fresh and sweet; the Western meadow larks, newly come, seemed in imminent danger of splitting their own throats through

gro who, with different environment, might have been a Congo prince; but the face of "Plug" Spanos, a notorious gunman who was by far the worst character in the gang, might have been that of an artless plow-boy in a distant land under a warm sun. There remained, however, the "exception." Curiously enough, whenever the warden's thought dwelt upon the inmates of his prison, classifying them into v

with his fellows. To-day Sprigley, the guard in first command of the gang, had placed him opposite Judy, the burly negro, but the latter was being driven straight toward absolute exhaustion. Yet Kinney at least knew how to subdue and direct the pouring fountain of his vitality and energy, for the r

inney. The image conveyed was never one of sheer brutality. For all their black hair, the large, brawny hands were well-shaped and sensitive; he had a healthy, good-humored mouth that could evidently, on occasion, be the seat of a most pleasant, boyish smile. He had a straight, good nose, rather high cheek bones, and a broad, brown forehead, straight rather than sloping swiftly like that of the negro opposite. But none of his features, nor yet his brawny form, caught and held the attention as did his vivid, dar

rd, as they watched the man's pick swing in the air. "Sometimes I wonder whether he ough

e observed. But at once he began to evince real interest. "I maintain you can't tell anything from their fac

1919, a crook of the crooks, as you say. No one knows where he came from-and that's queer in itself. You know very well that his face and form are going to be re

ng to take any chance. He wasn't a hop-head, yet they all looked at him as sort of queer; though ready to follow him to the last ditch, yet some way they thought him off his head. And Swanson believes that his career of crime started after he reached Seattle, not before-that he hadn't grown up to crime like most of the men in

me that. Anybody who can

straightened up as if something had hit him and let the jimmy fall with a thump to the pavement. Frank said he thought that the man had 'gone off his nut,' but it's my private opinion that he had been somewhat deranged all the time he was in Seattle, and he just came to, more or less, that minute. The m

the underworld always said he'd die before he'd give up, but he let the cop take him like he was a baby. Frank go

er queer thing. You know, the chief has started a system here to keep track of all the prisoners, with the idea of making them good citizens when they

Then Mitchell decided he was just sulking. But his second guess was no better than his first. I haven't got Mitchell persuaded yet, and mayb

unded right to him, but 'Kinney' didn't-the reason likely being that Kinney was an alias adopted during his life as a criminal. I suppose you've noticed that queer, be

ok-you might say that the criminal side that all of us has simply took possession of him. That night in the alley he ca

it-besides talk? Mitchell says you're

the last analysis, responsible for his crimes, we wouldn't have anybody left in the penitentiary. He's in for five years-considering what he'll pick up here,

in a long, dark street. Complete loss of memory prevented him from

been upon him, before that time. But as Sprigley had said, that night had marked a change. It was true that so far as facts went he was no better off: when he had come to himself he

ss gray that did not in the least waken his interest. Indeed the only light that flung into the unfathomable darkness of his forgetfulnes

consciousness of having dreamed the most stirring, amazing dreams, but what they were he couldn't tell. He could only remember fragments, such as a

ng fiercely through the avenues of veins. Evidently they recalled some happiness that was forgotten. And there was one phase, at least, of this work in

lesser brethren in the meadows had a really extraordinary effect upon him. It always caught him up and held him, stirring some deep, strange part of him that he hardly knew existed. Sometimes the weird, wailing sound brought him quite to the edge of a profound discovery, but always the flocks sped on and out of hearing before he could quite grasp it. When the moon lo

nce they had come. And because the road work the convicts were doing brought them, this afternoon, in sight of the railroad right-of-way, Ben now and then caught sight of other wayfarers moving slowly, but no less s

d him. And at the sight of a small, stooped figure advancing towa

tracted his attention. They saw what seemed to them a white-haired old wanderer of sixty years or

he cinder trail northward, but plainly he did not belong to the brotherhood of tramps. They saw that he was white-haired and withered, but upright; and that undying youth dwelt in his twinkling blue eyes and the complexity of little, good-natured lines about his mouth. Poverty, age, the hardships of the cinder trail had not conquered him in the least. He was small physically, but his skinny arms and le

Instead they were held and amazed by the apparent fact that at the first scrutiny of the man's outline, his car

quality of drama. In the contagion of suppressed excitement, the other prisoners paused, their tools held st

des, toward him. "My God, aren

, his voice cool and calm with an infinite certai