Fingers--" Kent whirled suddenly from the window.
"Fingers--"

And Fingers, like a sphynx, sat and stared at Kent.

"You were that man," Kent went on, coming nearer to him. "You lied,
because you loved a woman, and you went out to face death because of
that woman. The men at Lost City didn't know it, Fingers. The husband
didn't know it. And the girl, that girl-wife you worshiped in secret,
didn't dream of it! But that was the truth, and you know it deep down
in your soul. You fought your way out. You lived! And all these years,
down here on your porch, you've been dreaming of a woman, of the girl
you were willing to die for a long time ago. Fingers, am I right? And
if I am, will you shake hands?"

Slowly Fingers had risen from his chair. No longer were his eyes dull
and lifeless, but flaming with a fire that Kent had lighted again after
many years. And he reached out a hand and gripped Kent's, still staring
at him as though something had come back to him from the dead.

"I thank you, Kent, for your opinion of that man," he said. "Somehow,
you haven't made me--ashamed. But it was only the shell of a man that
won out after that day when I took Tatman's place. Something happened.
I don't know what. But--you see me now. I never went back into the
diggings. I degenerated. I became what I am."

"And you are today just what you were when you went out to die for Mary
Tatman," cried Kent. "The same heart and the same soul are in you.
Wouldn't you fight again today for her?"

A stifled cry came from Fingers' lips. "My God, yes, Kent--I would!"

"And that's why I wanted you, of all men, to come to me, Fingers," Kent
went on swiftly. "To you, of all the men on earth, I wanted to tell my
story. And now, will you listen to it? Will you forgive me for bringing
up this memory that must be precious to you, only that you might more
fully understand what I am going to say? I don't want you to think of
it as a subterfuge on my part. It is more than that. It is--Fingers, is
it inspiration? Listen, and tell me."

And for a long time after that James Kent talked, and Fingers listened,
the soul within him writhing and dragging itself back into fierce life,
demanding for the first time in many years the something which it had
once possessed, but which it had lost. It was not the lazy, mysterious,
silent Dirty Fingers who sat in the cell with Kent. In him the spirit
of twenty years ago had roused itself from long slumber, and the thrill