to sharper sorrows. He had a passive eagerness to taste
bitterness to the lees... When he heard the door open finally he did
not rise. He kept his face buried. A light footstep came nearer and he
was conscious of the pressure of icy fingers upon his hands. He looked
up. Ginger stood before him.

"I brought you some smokes," she said, simply, "but they wouldn't let
me bring them in."

He tried to speak, but suddenly great sobs shook him.

She put her fingers in his hair, drawing him to his feet, and
presently he felt her own tears splashing his cheek.

He was smiling when they finally came for him. But he felt weaker than
ever, and as they walked out into the glare of the street he was glad
to lean upon Ginger's arm. The sheriff's van was drawn up to the curb.
Two deputies helped him in. He turned for a last look at Ginger. Her
pale little face was twisted, but she waved a gay farewell. In a far
corner of the lumbering machine Fred could see two catlike eyes
glimmering. Slowly his gaze penetrated the gloom, and the figure of a
battered man shaped itself, his two hands strapped to his sides. The
deputies got in, the door was shut sharply, and the van shot forward.

In less than fifteen minutes they had reached the ferry.

The train was late, and it was long after nine o'clock when it pulled
into the Fairview station. The day had been hot, and the breath of
evening was bringing out grateful and cooling odors from the sunburnt
stubble of the hillside as Fred Starratt and his keeper stepped upon
the station platform. The insane Italian followed between two guards.
An automobile swung toward them. They got in and rode through the
thickening gloom for about three miles... Presently one of the
deputies leaned toward Fred, pointing a finger in the direction of a
cluster of lights, as he said:

"There's your future home, old man. Keep a stiff upper lip. You'll
need all your grit."

CHAPTER XII

Fred Starratt rested surprisingly well that first night. But two weeks
in the detention hospital had taken the sting out of institutional
preliminaries. The officials at Fairview put him through precisely the
same paces, except upon a somewhat larger scale. There was the
selfsame questioning, the same yielding up of personal effects, the
same inevitable bath. And almost the same solitary room, except that
this one peered out upon the free world through a heavily barred
window instead of through a skylight, and boasted a