estly to take up some definite occupation
after leaving jail, only to be hounded from position to position by
these interfering sleuths who fancied it their duty to inform the
erstwhile employer that the man who was working for him was an
ex-jailbird and consequently should have a keen eye kept on him for a
while. The inevitable, of course, followed; for what employer could
afford to have an ex-convict on his staff?

And so, Phil did not attempt to secure work in Vancouver. He had a
horror of the rush and buzz of the city anyway.

Policemen were everywhere; on the sidewalks watching everybody and
everything; at the street corners directing the traffic.

Self-consciousness made Phil feel guilty almost. These men gave him
the creeps, innocent of all guilt though he was. His one desire was to
get as far away from them and all things connected with them as was
possible.

He sat on a seat in the park one afternoon, trying to decide his
future.

He thought of Graham Brenchfield, now Mayor of Vernock, evidently
wealthy beyond Phil's wildest dreams. He remembered the old
partnership pact and the five hundred dollars he paid for it--five
years, a pool and a straight division of the profits. He put his hand
in his pocket, took out his money and counted it over;--twenty-four
dollars and fifteen cents.

He laughed. But his laugh was void of merriment, for he had vowed
solemnly to himself in prison that some day he would get even with
Graham Brenchfield. And, so far as Brenchfield was concerned, the iron
was still in Phil Ralston's soul.

As he sat there, the vision of an angel face came back to him; the
picture of a girl of small frame, fairy-like, agile, bending over him
as he lay faint and wounded on the floor of her little bungalow up on
the hill overlooking Vernock. And it settled his mental uncertainty.

He would go back there! It was a free and bracing life in that
beautiful Valley, and, God knows! that was what he required after five
years of confinement. He could pick up his strength while at work on
the farms, or among the orchards, or on the cattle ranges. Lots of
things he could do there!

No one would know him,--no one had seen him before but she and
Brenchfield. She would never recognise him--shaved and clean--for the
broken, ragged wretch whom she had befriended. As for Brenchfield--he
would know Phil anywhere, in any disguise, but Phil knew how to close
his mouth tighter than a clam.

Besides, there was