The depressive journey from Colorado to the Middle West records itself in memory as a dismal dream out of which there were awakenings only for train-changings or a word of talk now and then with Cummings. The deputy warden was a reticent man; somber almost to sadness, as befitted his calling; but he was neither morose nor churlish. Underneath the official crust he was a man like other men; was, I say, because he is dead now. On the final day of the journey I persuaded him to tell me how I had been traced, and I was still human enough to find a grain of comfort in the assurance that Agatha Geddis had not taken my money at the last only to turn and betray me. Barton, the Glendale wagon sales manager, was the one who was innocently responsible. He had talked too much, as I had feared he would. The clue thus furnished had been lost in St. Louis, but was picked up again, some months later, by Cummings himself through the police-record photograph in Denver. Cummings admitted that he had followed Polly and me on our wedding journey; that he had known where we were stopping, and had seen us in the canyon-brink hotel. "Why didn't you take me then?" I asked. He explained gruffly that the requisition papers with which he was provided were good only in Colorado, and that it was simpler to wait than to go through all the red tape of having them reissued for Arizona. Knowing that the wires were completely at his service, the answer did not satisfy me. "Was that the only reason?" I queried. He turned his sober eyes on me and shook his head sorrowfully, I thought. "I was young once, myself, Weyburn--and I had a wife: she died when the baby came. Maybe you deserve what's coming to you, and maybe you don't; but that little woman o' yours will never have another honeymoon." Disquieting visions of harsh prison punishments were oppressing me when we reached the penitentiary and I was taken before the eagle-eyed old Civil War veteran who had given me my parole. But the warden merely put me through a shrewd questioning, inquiring closely into my experiences as a paroled man, and making me tell him circumstantially the story of my indictment, trial and conviction, and also the later story of the mining experience in Colorado. "I don't recall that you ever protested your innocence while you were here serving your time, Weyburn," he commented, at the dose of the inquisition. "I didn't," I replied, wondering why he should go behind the returns to remark the omission. Then I added: "They all do that, and it doesn't change anything. You set it down as a lie--as it usually is." "Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you are not lying to me now?" he demanded. I met the test soberly. "I can. I was convicted of a crime that I didn't commit, and I broke my parole solely because that appeared to be the one remaining alternative to becoming a criminal in fact."