The place was the back room of an all-night saloon in the slum quarter beyond the bridge. It was warm, stiflingly warm and close, after the outdoor blast and chill, and it reeked like a sty. Kellow kicked out a chair for me and drew up one for himself on the opposite side of the small round card-table over which a single gas-jet hissed and sizzled, lighting the tiny box of a place with a sickly yellow glare. "What'll it be?" he asked, when the waiter came in. "A piece of bread and meat from the lunch counter, if you don't mind," I said; and then, in an apology for which I instantly despised myself: "Liquor doesn't agree with me lately; it--it would gag me." Kellow ordered whiskey for himself, and after the waiter was gone he stared at me contemptuously. "So it's come to that, has it?" he derided. "You're so damned hungry you're afraid to put a drop of bug-juice under your belt. You're a fool, Weyburn. I know what you've been doing, just as well as if you'd told me the whole story. Also, I'll believe now what I didn't believe while we were in 'stir'; you were pinched for something you didn't do." "Well?" I said, neither affirming nor denying. The free lunch had come and I was falling upon it like a famished wolf. I hadn't a penny in my pockets, and the bread and meat stood for breakfast, dinner and supper combined. Kellow swallowed his whiskey at a gulp and stood the empty glass bottom upward on the table. "Been trying the honest lay, I suppose--handing in your name and number wherever you went?" he suggested. I nodded, adding that there was nothing else to be done, as I saw it. He laughed scornfully. "A minute ago I said you were a fool, but you're worse than that--you're an infant! Why, good hell, Weyburn, there are a dozen ways to beat the parole game! Look at me: I'm here, ain't I? And the warden knows all about it, does he? Not on your life! Every four weeks he gets a letter from me telling him what a fine time I'm having on Dad's farm down in Wayne, and how I'm all to the good and thanking him every day for all he did for me. What?" "Somebody mails those letters for you in Wayne?" I asked. "Sure! And a little split for the marshal in the nearest town does the rest. Bimeby, when I've collected enough of the debt I spoke of, I'll shake the dust and disappear." "They'll find you and bring you back." "Not without a fine-tooth comb, they won't. This old world is plenty good and wide when you learn how to use it." "I suppose I haven't learned yet; and I don't want to learn--in your way, Kellow." Again he gave me the sneering laugh. "You may as well begin, and have it over with. It's all the same to you, now, whether you cracked the bank or didn't. You may think you can live square and live the prison-smell down, but you can't. It'll stick to you like your skin. Wherever you go, you'll be a marked man."