As the key rattled in the lock of the heavily barred door the wounded prisoner looked up from the cot on which he was lying and saw the second captive marched into the room by Constable Hubbard.

“I guess,” said the constable, “I can chance it to take the irons off ye while you’re in here, for we’ve got the place guarded by men who would shoot ye quick as they’d spit if you ever did break out, which ain’t nohow prob’le.”

“Thank you,” said the man, as Hubbard removed the handcuffs. “I won’t try to break out, I promise you that.”

“And I’d be a fool if I took any stock in your promise,” said the fat officer, as he backed out of the room, closing and relocking the door.

With a grimace of pain, the wounded man lifted himself to a sitting posture on the cot. The eyes of the two prisoners met.

“So they nabbed you after all, Thirteen-thirteen,” said the first prisoner. “Tough luck, old pal. I told yer to lay low.”

The other man shrugged his shoulders. “I did,” he answered; “but they surrounded the place and had me pinched, so there was no use trying to make a run for it. If I’d tried that, the chances were a hundred to one that the damage to your wing wouldn’t have been a patch compared to what would have happened to me.”

“Tough luck,” repeated the other. “But they can’t do anything to yer for this job we made such a rotten mess of. I won’t forget how you tied up this shoulder of mine, nor how the kid did his best to give me a show to get away. I’ll swear you wasn’t mixed up in the job here.”

The younger man smiled wearily. “It’s not fear of their nailing this business onto me that gets me,” he said; “it’s the old case against me. I was supposed to be dead and buried, you know. Yes, it’s tough luck. I was born under an unlucky star on the thirteenth day of the month. In prison I was ‘Number 1313,’ and that was a double sign of bad luck.”

“You made a great break, you and your two pals. When they nabbed the other pair and couldn’t find you, it seemed that all the luck was yours. Course, arter I did my bit and was turned loose, I heard you had croaked. When I was sitting on that box just at day peep trying to stop the blood that was leaking out of me and you stepped out to give a hand at the job, you certain looked like a ghost. I couldn’t believe you was old Thirteen-thirteen till you owned up to it. Then the youngster come on us, and we had to——”

“That’s the thing I regret most. Look here, Riley, you owe me something, don’t you?”

“Anything you say, old pal.”

“I bound up your wound the best way I could. My brother caught me at it. Then we had to bring him into the business, knowing that the searchers were likely to trace you to that place. If they did so, it was a sure thing that I’d be nabbed, which must lead to the public knowledge that Clarence Sage, escaped convict, had not been drowned in the Hudson. In hopes of avoiding this, my brother guided you into the woods and helped you as best as he could to get another start in your flight.”

“The kid done his part all right, pal.”

“Now I want you to do yours, Riley.”

“Spiel it off. Lay it out. Put me on. What am I to do?”

“Not one word about my brother and the part he played must escape your lips. He did it for me, not for you, but you owe him this much: you must protect him.”

“Bank on it, cull—bank on it. They’ll never jimmy a word of it outer me.”

“Thanks,” said Clarence Sage, taking the single chair which the lockup contained and seating himself near the cot. “That relieves my mind in a measure. Fred’s a fine boy, and it would be a shame to have suspicion fall on him. My misfortune has cast enough stigma on my unfortunate family.”

“Say, ’bo, there’s just one thing about you that I don’t like. You don’t have to put up this misfortune bluff to me. Course it’s always hard luck when we get laid by the heels on any little job, but seems to me you’re throwing it out that you was on the level.”

“I was,” asserted Clarence Sage grimly, almost fiercely. “I was arrested, tried and convicted for a crime I never committed. If this were not true, I wouldn’t think of saying so now. Somebody else looted the bank, and I believe I know the man. It was on his testimony principally that I was convicted. He saved himself, but the knowledge that he sent an innocent man to Sing Sing may possibly have caused him some uneasy and regretful moments.”

“Well,” said Riley slowly, as he narrowly eyed his fellow prisoner, “you spiels it like you was talking gospel. Mebbe it’s true.”

“It is true,” asserted Clarence Sage. “Think what it meant, Riley, not only to me, but to my people. I have the finest mother a boy ever had. The thought of her shame and suffering has been gall and wormwood to me.”

“My old mother,” said Riley, with a touch of sentiment, “was dead and buried before I was pinched the first time, thank Heaven!”

Sage bowed his head and spoke in a low tone, his gaze fixed upon the floor.

“It was to get another look at my mother’s face that I returned to Oakdale. I was here a week ago, and I went away without obtaining a glimpse of her. In all the years that I was supposed to be dead I have carried her image in my heart, and it was the knowledge of her faith in me—for she never believed me guilty—that kept me straight, I believe. I’ve knocked about in many places and associated with all sorts of men, some of them honest, but many more who were crooks. I’ve roughed it in Alaska, sailed before the mast, starved and nearly died from fever in the Philippines, tried my hand at coal mining in Australia; and through it all the knowledge of my mother’s faith has kept me straight, even though I’ve had many a chance to turn a good thing by crookedness. At last, believing there was little danger, I came back and hunted for my people. I found them here, and here I have likewise found my undoing.”

“Tough luck,” said Riley again. “They’ll send you back to the jug.”

“No doubt of it. I’ll have to serve out my term, with an additional period hitched on to it because of my break. There’s water in my veins, Riley; the dread of what I’m up against takes the heart out of me. Perhaps you don’t know what it is to be sent to prison with the knowledge that you’re innocent and serving time for the crime of another man.”

“It must be fierce,” said Riley sympathetically. “And you say he put it on you at the trial? Pal, if I was in your boots, he’d get hisn some day. When I’d done my turn and been discharged, I’d look the gent up and hand him something he’d remember—if he was in shape to remember anything.”

“That would be poor satisfaction to me. It wouldn’t clear my name of the crime. It might mean that I’d be sent up again for another, still greater, crime. The only thing in this wide world that can ever give me the least satisfaction is proof of my innocence. I’ve dreamed of it—dreamed of it a million times. I’ve dreamed of standing before the world free and exonerated. Of going to my old mother and feeling her arms about my neck and her tears upon my cheeks, and hearing her glad cry, ‘I knew it, my boy—I knew it!’ Nothing but that, Riley, can ever satisfy me, and if there’s any justice under Heaven it will come some day.”

“I hope so, pal—I hope so,” said Riley, with genuine sympathy. “I’m just a plain crook, and nothing else; but for an honest man to be marked as a crook by the bulls and people in general—why, that’s blazes, sure.”