, nor
the judge who sentenced me, believed me guilty; but
everything was against me, except my past life, and that had
no weight with the law. My sentence was commuted to a term
of years in the penitentiary. I will not write of my
prison-life. Three months after it began I received a letter
from Barbara, telling me of my mother's death, bidding me
keep up courage, and pray, but saying nothing of herself, or
of _him_.

At the end of five years came freedom. The real criminals
had been discovered, and I was discharged. The man who went
out of that prison door was not the man who had entered it.
The law, conscious of the fact that no human power can make
amends to an innocent man for a punishment unjustly
inflicted, takes no notice of it. It is dumb before a wrong
so monstrous. I went back to my native town. Every hand was
stretched out to me. My old employers at the mill would have
put me in my old place, but I refused. I inquired for
Barbara and for him. They had married after my mother's
death and gone, it was said, to America. I took measures to
prove this; then I went to work at my old trade. I worked
day and night, and lived on next to nothing. At the end of
a year I had what I wanted. A fortnight later I was in New
York.

My plan was to work my way over the country--to work and
watch. I felt sure that the man I was looking for would work
at his trade, too, and I believed in time I should get on
his track. I stayed several months in New York, and found
plenty to do. The only fault found with me was my love of
change. "You know what is said of 'rolling stones,' Jordan,"
my employers would say, as I was about to leave. "It isn't
moss-gathering I am after," I would answer.

I took no man into my confidence, but I lost no chance of
getting acquainted with men of our craft. I frequented
places where they congregated, set them to talking, asking
them as to Englishmen they had known, etc.

"You are looking for some one, Jordan," was said more than
once.

"Maybe I am," I would answer.

Once a man who had been looking on and listening, said, with
a laugh, "I'm devilish glad it ain't me you're looking for,
Jordan!" And I knew well enough what he meant.

I have wandered south and west, I have thought many a ti