p pay yore lawyer," continued Bob. "One
thing more. You're not the only one that's liable to be sent up.
Miller's on the way back to Malapi. If he don't get a term for
hawss-stealin', I'm a liar. We got a dead open-and-shut case against
him."

The guard who was to take Dave to the penitentiary bustled in cheerfully.
"All right, boys. If you're ready we'll be movin' down to the depot."

The friends shook hands again.

CHAPTER XV

IN DENVER

The warden handed him a ticket back to Denver, and with it a stereotyped
little lecture of platitudes.

"Your future lies before you to be made or marred by yourself, Sanders.
You owe it to the Governor who has granted this parole and to the good
friends who have worked so hard for it that you be honest and industrious
and temperate. If you do this the world will in time forget your past
mistakes and give you the right hand of fellowship, as I do now."

The paroled man took the fat hand proffered him because he knew the
warden was a sincere humanitarian. He meant exactly what he said. Perhaps
he could not help the touch of condescension. But patronage, no matter
how kindly meant, was one thing this tall, straight convict would not
stand. He was quite civil, but the hard, cynical eyes made the warden
uncomfortable. Once or twice before he had known prisoners like this,
quiet, silent men who were never insolent, but whose eyes told him that
the iron had seared their souls.

The voice of the warden dropped briskly to business. "Seen the
bookkeeper? Everything all right, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Well, wish you luck."

"Thanks."

The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling.

The prison officer's eyes followed him a little wistfully. His function,
as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to
the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds. They were not
wild beasts. They were human beings who had made a misstep. Sometimes he
had been able to influence men strongly, but he felt that it had not been
true of this puncher from the cow country.

Sanders walked slowly out of the office and through the door in the wall
that led back to life. He was free. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows
of all the years of his life were waiting for him. But the fact stirred
in him no emotion. As he stood in the dry Colorado sunshine his heart was
quite dead.

In the earlier days of his imprisonment it had not been so. He had
dreamed often of