the loss
of liberty wherewith to profit by it; and for those who had known me in
the great gold camp and elsewhere in the West--my new friends--I was
branded as an escaped convict. For two shameful years I should be shut
away from Polly, from freedom, from participation in the fight my
partners were making to save the mine, and most probably from any
knowledge of how the fight was going, either for or against us.

Is it any matter for wonder that by the end of the solitary week I was
little better than a mad-man? If I might have had speech with the
warden, I should have prayed for work; for any employment, however hard
or menial, that would serve to stop the sapping of the very foundations
of reason. One hope I clung to, as the drowning catch at straws. I
could not doubt that Polly was near at hand. If the regular "visiting
day" should intervene they would surely admit her. But in this, too, I
was unlucky. The date of my reincarceration fell between two of the
regular visiting days. So I waited and looked and longed in vain.

I don't know how many more circlings of the clock-hands were measured
off before the break came. I lost count of the time by days and was no
longer able to think clearly. In perfect physical condition when I was
arrested, I began to go to pieces, both mentally and physically, under
the strain of suspense. Then insomnia came to add its terrors; I could
neither eat nor sleep. I had an ominous foreboding of what the total
loss of appetite meant, and kept telling myself over and over that for
Polly's sake I must fight to save my sanity.

Under such conditions I was beginning to see things where there was
nothing to be seen on the day when I had my first visitor, and the
shock of surprise when the cell door was opened to admit Cyrus
Whitredge, the lawyer whose bungling defense had done so little to
stave off my conviction, was almost like a premonition of further
disaster. Before I could rise from my seat on the cot he was shaking
hands with me and twisting his dry, leathery face into its nearest
approach to a smile.

"Don't bother to get up, Bert," he began effusively. "Just stay right
where you are and take it easy. I've been trying for three solid days
to get up here, but court is in session and I couldn't break away.
You're not looking very well, and they tell me down below that you're
off your feed. That won't do, you know--won't do at all. We are going
to get you right out of