high chair, and heard the man shout back his order to the kitchen with
a faint smile of anticipation. It was eleven o'clock, but it was even
then necessary to begin to watch, as there was a tradition in the
office that prisoners with influence were sometimes released before
their sentence was quite fulfilled, and Bronson eyed the "released
prisoners' gate" from across the top of his paper. The electric lights
before the prison showed every stone in its wall, and turned the icy
pavements into black mirrors of light. On a church steeple a block
away a round clock-face told the minutes, and Bronson wondered, if
they dragged so slowly to him, how tardily they must follow one
another to the men in the prison, who could not see the clock's face.
The office-boy finished his supper, and went out to explore the
neighborhood, and came back later to say that it was growing colder,
and that he had found the driver in a saloon, but that he was, to all
appearances, still sober. Bronson suggested that he had better
sacrifice himself once again and eat something for the good of the
house, and Gallegher assented listlessly, with the comment that one
"might as well be eatin' as doin' nothin'." He went out again
restlessly, and was gone for a quarter of an hour, and Bronson had
re-read the day's paper and the signs on the wall and the clipping he
had read before, and was thinking of going out to find him, when
Gallegher put his head and arm through the door and beckoned to him
from the outside. Bronson wrapped his coat up around his throat and
followed him leisurely to the street. Gallegher halted at the curb,
and pointed across to the figure of a woman pacing up and down in the
glare of the electric lights, and making a conspicuous shadow on the
white surface of the snow.

"That lady," said Gallegher, "asked me what door they let the
released prisoners out of, an' I said I didn't know, but that I knew a
young fellow who did."

Bronson stood considering the possible value of this for a moment, and
then crossed the street slowly. The woman looked up sharply as he
approached, but stood still.

"If you are waiting to see Quinn," Bronson said, abruptly, "he will
come out of that upper gate, the green one with the iron spikes over
it."

The woman stood motionless, and looked at him doubtfully. She was
quite young and pretty, but her face was drawn and wearied-looking, as
though she were a convalescent or one who was in trouble. She was of