t have been otherwise."

He observed my questioning face, and added, "Swope knows we have talked
together, she and I. He knows he must extinguish us both if he would
rebury for good and all the truth he thought was already buried."

"His wife--his own wife!" I exclaimed.

The words probed the quick. For a minute Newman's reserve was gone,
and the tormented soul of the man was plainly visible.

"It is a lie, a legal lie!" he cried.

He calmed immediately. His self-control took charge; it was as if his
will, caught napping for an instant, awoke, and drew a curtain that
shut out alien eyes.

I was dumb, ashamed and sorry to have unwittingly hurt my friend. But
now he was speaking again, in his accustomed sober, emotionless voice.

"Of course, I trust you absolutely, Jack. I'd like to tell you the
whole story. But--I am not free to talk----"

"You don't have to tell me anything," I blurted. "I know you are my
man, and you know I am your man."

"You _are_ a friend!" he exclaimed. "But I will not sail under false
colors in your eyes, lad. I am a jail-bird, an escaped felon."

"Oh, I knew all about that long ago," I said, carelessly.

He looked his surprise.

"I heard that bum's story through the wall, that night in the Knitting
Swede's," I explained. "I didn't try to listen, but I couldn't help
hearing him. About the frame-up they worked on you--Beulah Twigg, and
Mary--that's the lady, isn't it?--and the one Beasley called 'he'--I
know 'he' is Yankee Swope. Oh, it was a dirty trick they played on
you, Newman. I'm with you in anything you do to get even."

He shook his head, smiling. "What a young savage you are, Jack!" says
he. "An eye for an eye, eh? But you guess wrongly, lad. That
treachery you heard Beasley explain was but the beginning. I was sent
to prison for a murder, the brutal and cowardly murder of a helpless
old man."

"I know it was a frame-up," I cried. "And, anyway, I don't care. I
know you're on the square, and that is all that matters with me."

"If I were not, your faith would make me on the square," he answered.
"But--I was not guilty. I came on board the _Golden Bough_ intending
to become a murderer--but that madness is past. Now I am anxious to
prevent killing--any killing. Now I am determined to preserve peace in
this ship.

"For she is safe so long as I am alive, and he cannot easily dispose of
me so long as the crew is peaceful. You can understand that, can yo