mystery--where they came from he could not tell.
Thinking that Isa was planning his arrest, he suddenly left the country.
He turned up afterwards as president of a Nevada silver-mine company,
which did a large business in stocks but a small one in dividends; and I
have a vague impression that he had something to do with the building of
the Union Pacific Railroad. His creditors made short work of the property
left by Mrs. Plausaby.

CHAPTER XXXV.

UNBARRED.

Lurton was gone six weeks. His letters to Charlton were not very hopeful.
People are slow to believe that a court has made a mistake.

I who write and you who read get over six weeks as smoothly as we do over
six days. But six weeks in grim, gray, yellowish, unplastered, limestone
walls, that are so thick and so high and so rough that they are always
looking at you in suspicion and with stern threat of resistance! Six
weeks in May and June and July inside such walls, where there is scarcely
a blade of grass, hardly a cool breeze, not even the song of a bird! A
great yard so cursed that the little brown wrens refuse to bless it with
their feet! The sound of machinery and of the hammers of unwilling
toilers, but no mellow voice of robin or chatter of gossiping
chimney-swallows! To Albert they were six weeks of alternate hope and
fear, and of heart-sickness.

The contractor gave a Fourth-of-July dinner to the convicts. Strawberries
and cream instead of salt pork and potatoes. The guards went out and left
the men alone, and Charlton was called on for a speech. But all eulogies
of liberty died on his lips. He could only talk platitudes, and he could
not say anything with satisfaction to himself. He tossed wakefully all
that night, and was so worn when morning came that he debated whether he
should not ask to be put on the sick-list.

He was marched to the water-tank as usual, then to breakfast, but he
could not eat. When the men were ordered to work, one of the guards said:

"Charlton, the warden wants to see you in the office."

Out through the vestibule of the main building Charlton passed with a
heart full of hope, alternating with fear of a great disappointment. He
noticed, as he passed, how heavy the bolts and bars were, and wondered if
these two doors would ever shut him in again. He walked across the yard,
feeble and faint, and then ascended the long flight of steps which went
up to the office-door. For the office was so arranged as to open out of