't
have done it anyway. Any fellow fly enough to do me that way when I'm
wide awake and 'at' myself is welcome to all he gets. . . . Well,
here's our jumping-off place, I guess. My man 'll be waiting for me at
the Southern, and I must go. Take care of yourself, and so long!"

I let him go; saw him climb into a cab and disappear. There was
nothing to be done about the money, of course: I had spent more than
half of it for my Denver ticket. But, since honesty, like all other
human attributes, dies hard in any soil where it has once taken root, I
turned away with a great thankfulness in my heart. The owner of the
black pocketbook was found, and some day he should have his own
again--with interest.

Nothing of any consequence happened after Barton left me. Finding upon
inquiry that the westbound connecting train would not leave until eight
o'clock, I ventured out in search of a slop-shop where I could purchase
a cheap suit to go with the clean shirt and collar given me by the
free-handed sales manager. The purchase left me with less than ten
dollars in my pocket, but it made a new man of me otherwise. In the
old life at home I had never dreamed that a few rags and wisps of
cloth, properly sewed together, make all the difference in a moralizing
world between the man and the vagrant.

There was a wreck on the Missouri road some time during the night, and
our train was caught behind it and delayed. For this reason another
rainy afternoon was drawing to its close when I had my first glimpse of
Kansas City, high-perched on its hills from my glimpsing view-point on
the opposite bank of the Missouri River, but low-lying and crowded to
suffocation with railroad yards in that part of it where the train came
to a stand.

As a matter of course, I had missed my proper Denver connection, owing
to the wreck delay. But, a passenger agent directing me, I found the
evening Union Pacific train waiting at another platform. A short
half-hour later the tangle of railroad yards in the river "bottoms" was
left behind and the overland train was boring westward into a cloudy
night through Kansas.

With the welcoming West lying fair and free before me, the memory of
the prison years and of the parole purgatory to which they had led was
already beginning to fade into a limbo of things past and irrevocable,
and therefore to be quickly and decently forgotten. There should be a
new life in the new world, and the humiliation and disgr