of thing? What kind of respect have
you for my good reputation anyway? You selfish bunch are all alike!

"Of course we went after you! Of course we brought you back, just to
teach you manners, same as a school teacher calls back a scholar to
shut the door he has left open.

"If you got your deserts you would be back there for a few months
longer. If you don't watch yourself when you get out, you'll be back
here again. Eh, Johnston!"

"Yes, sir! They generally do come back, sir," grunted that echo.
"Seem to like us; can't stay away, sir!"

"Now, Ralston! Here is your discharge. You're free to go when you
like. But Johnston will open the gate for you this time."

In an overflow of weakness, Phil reeled at the unexpected news. He
staggered against the Governor's desk as he clutched at the paper.

That official smiled benignly. "Here is a present from the government,
a cheque for fifty dollars for your faithful services--never absent,
never late," he grinned. "Johnston has your two grips in the hall with
your stuff in them that they found in your shack at Carnaby."

He held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Ralston! You've been a good lad here but for your one bad
break fifteen months ago, and this one. Don't come back."

In half an hour, Philip Ralston was breathing the air of freedom in
the inter-urban tram speeding toward Vancouver.

It was the spring of the year. His worldly wealth was fifty dollars.
His clothes were some years behind the latest model, but they were
decent enough, clean and serviceable.

He put up at a third-rate hotel on Cordova Street and spent one
glorious week sleeping, eating, strolling the busy streets and
lounging in the parks and on the beaches. He spoke to few, although he
had of a necessity to listen to many. At the hotel in the evenings,
several transients told him their story, hoping thereby to hear his
own as a time-chaser, but Phil, true to the sobriquet he had earned at
Ukalla, remained silent.

At the end of a week, after paying his bed and board, his fifty
dollars had dwindled to thirty. He knew he could not afford to let it
go much lower, otherwise the detectives, who seemed forever spying on
him, would be arresting him on a vagrancy charge. Vancouver was
chuck-full of detectives, many of whom Phil knew by sight, while the
others he sensed. And he loathed and abhorred their entire breed.

Too many were the stories he had heard from fellow prisoners at
Ukalla, who had tried hon