ace of the past
should be so deeply burled that it could never be resurrected. I was
still under twenty-nine, it must be remembered, and at that age Hope,
the one human quality which seems to have in it the precious germ of
immortality, will flap its wings over the most wretched ash-heap that
was ever blown together by the bleak winds of misfortune.

X

The Plain-Clothes Man

Upon landing in Denver in the middle of a day that seemed too bright
and exhilaratingly bracing to be true, I had an adventure which, while
it had no immediate bearing upon my escape, is worthy of record because
it led to a second hasty flight, and so became in a manner responsible
for much that happened afterward.

As I left the train a squarely built man, sharp-eyed under the brim of
his modish soft hat, was standing aside on the track platform and
evidently scrutinizing each of the debarking passengers in turn. Some
acute inner sense instantly warned me, telling me that this silent
watcher was a plain-clothes man from police headquarters; and his first
word when he stepped out to confront and stop me confirmed the
foreboding.

"You're wanted," he announced curtly, twitching his coat lapel aside to
show his badge.

This was another of the crises in which I was made to feel the murder
madness leaping alive in blood and brain; but the publicity of the
place and the blank hopelessness of escape in a strange city made any
thought of resistance the sheerest folly.

"What am I wanted for?" I asked.

"You'll find that out later. Will you go quietly, or do you want the
nippers?"

The cooler second thought reassured me. It seemed entirely incredible
that the news of the broken parole had already been put on the wires.
In the natural order of things I should hardly be missed until after my
failure to report to the prison authorities at the month end should
raise the hue and cry.

"I'll go quietly, of course," I conceded; and then I added the lie of
sham bravado: "I don't know of any reason why I shouldn't. You are the
man who is taking all the chances."

With no further talk I was marched through the station building, out
the long approach walkway to the foot of Seventeenth Street, and so on
up-town, the plain-clothes man keeping even step with me and indicating
the course at the corner-turnings by a push or a wordless jerk of his
head.

As we went I was striving anxiously to invent a plausible story to be
told at headquarters.