yours, Kid Shannon. I got a good saloon
business, and nothing crooked on hand but what's past and done with, and
I looks to you to give a fellow a chance. Do I get it? Jail ain't goin'
to help me, and it would break her. Look here, sport: I _want_ to
be good."

"Kid," said Blizzard, "no man that _wants_ to be good need be afraid of
me. You'd have been a good boy always--if it hadn't been for me. _I_
know that as well as you. I've got the past all written down in my head.
I can't rub it out. But any man that's got the nerve can put new writing
across and across the old, until the old can't be read, or if it could
would read like a joke. You can tell whomsoever it concerns to do well
and fear nothing. At first I thought to tell Lichtenstein every first
and last thing that I knew about this city, and he tried to make me
tell. We had a meeting, Old Abe and I did. I was always afraid of the
little Jew, Kid. Well, face to face, I wasn't. He talked, and I talked.
And I was the stronger. He lets me go scot-free, and I don't tell
anything. If others get you for what you've done, it can't be helped.
But none of you'll be got through me. The past is buried; but if in the
future any of you fellows start anything, and I hear of it--look out"

Kid Shannon wriggled uncomfortably. "Say," he said, "what changed you?"

"I'm not changed," said Blizzard; "according to Dr. Ferris I'm just
acting natural. I was a good boy. I had a fracture of the skull. The
bone pressed on my gray matter and made me a bad man. I'll tell you a
funny thing: _I can't beat the box any more!_ I had a go at it the other
day, the missus all ready to work the pedals, and Lord help me there was
no more music in my head or my fingers than there is in the liver of a
frog. It was the same when I was a two-legged little kid--no music."

"Are you going to close the old diggings?"

Blizzard shook his head. "Yes and no. I'm going to pull down the old
rookery; and I'm going to put up in its place a model factory."

"Hats?"

"Hats and maybe other things. I'm going to show New York how to run a
sweatshop--you wait and see--the most wages and the least sweat--and the
girls happier and safer than in their own homes. The missus and I were
planning to bolt to a new place and begin life all over. That was
foolish. I'd always feel like a coward. Don't forget that old friends
meditating new crimes will be welcome at the office--advice always given
away, money sometimes and so