d and
unopened, accounts, note-books and all the paraphernalia which an untidy
man collects.

Letter by letter, T. X. went through the accumulation without finding
anything to help him. Then his eye was attracted by a small tin case
thrust into one of the oblong pigeon holes at the back of the desk. This
he pulled out and opened and found a small wad of paper wrapped in tin
foil.

"Hello, hello!" said T. X., and he was pardonably exhilarated.

CHAPTER VI

A Man stood in the speckless courtyard before the Governor's house at
Dartmoor gaol. He wore the ugly livery of shame which marks the convict.
His head was clipped short, and there was two days' growth of beard upon
his haggard face. Standing with his hands behind him, he waited for the
moment when he would be ordered to his work.

John Lexman--A. O. 43--looked up at the blue sky as he had looked so
many times from the exercise yard, and wondered what the day would bring
forth. A day to him was the beginning and the end of an eternity. He
dare not let his mind dwell upon the long aching years ahead. He dare
not think of the woman he left, or let his mind dwell upon the agony
which she was enduring. He had disappeared from the world, the world he
loved, and the world that knew him, and all that there was in life; all
that was worth while had been crushed and obliterated into the granite
of the Princetown quarries, and its wide horizon shrunken by the gaunt
moorland with its menacing tors.

New interests made up his existence. The quality of the food was one.
The character of the book he would receive from the prison library
another. The future meant Sunday chapel; the present whatever task they
found him. For the day he was to paint some doors and windows of an
outlying cottage. A cottage occupied by a warder who, for some reason,
on the day previous, had spoken to him with a certain kindness and a
certain respect which was unusual.

"Face the wall," growled a voice, and mechanically he turned, his hands
still behind him, and stood staring at the grey wall of the prison
storehouse.

He heard the shuffling feet of the quarry gang, his ears caught the
clink of the chains which bound them together. They were desperate men,
peculiarly interesting to him, and he had watched their faces furtively
in the early period of his imprisonment.

He had been sent to Dartmoor after spending three months in Wormwood
Scrubbs. Old hands had told him variously that he w