Her convulsed face showed that she pitied him, and with his small and ferret-like eyes gleaming approvingly on her he continued, "You're a lady, ma'am, and I'll tell you what I'm aiming at. I don't want to give up this life. If I did, I could earn ten thousand dollars to-morrow by going to the detectives in New York and splitting on Gentleman George. But I'm not anxious to play spy. I'd be found out, and I've just been watching a young crook, that turned State's evidence in a Boston jail, come out and go crazy on account of the whole gang turning against him. He slunk round the streets like a sick cat, and he squealed in his sleep. No one spoke to him, and he died in the horrors." "Can't you run away from them?" said Miss Gastonguay, with a burst of impassioned appeal. "Leave the atmosphere of crime. I'll send you anywhere." "Anywhere; I don't want to go. Would you be happy in my hang-out? No, ma'am. Would I be happy in yours? No, ma'am, again. You rich people don't know what liberty is." "Liberty--liberty," she repeated, warningly. "A liberty that ends in a prison." "You straight people make queer mistakes. I'm a better lot than my family. They don't live by rule as I do. They'll lie and pick at small truck. They haven't any ambition. I've got my life chalked out. I'm not going to get a prison face, I sha'n't go beyond the limit." "The limit?" "The fifteen or twenty year limit. If you keep out of jail, well and good. If you get too long sentences your health breaks down, and you get the shivers." "What are they?" "Nerves; you think, 'S'pose the cops catch me.' You may be in the midst of a fancy job. Everything in you trembles, even your eyeballs, and you'd best quit and run, for if the shivers get fastened on you, you're no good, and might as well take to the tomato can tramps. I'm going to knock off before I get 'em. I've been lucky about jails so far, and if you'll help me out of this now--" He spoke suggestively, and Miss Gastonguay tried to bring back her strained and wandering attention to him. "When you go away, will you see this man,--this Gentleman George?" "I'm sure to pretty soon." "Will you give him a message from me?" "Yes, ma'am." "Tell him that though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they are always going. Retribution will come--" Her severe voice faltered, and while she was recovering breath the young criminal observed, curiously, "Gentleman George is a pretty close connection of yours." She saw that he did not know what the connection was, and would not enlighten him. "I wish you'd let me carry back to him that little shoe mascot." "Never." "Most all gamblers have something they hang on to," he said, with a disappointed air. "Gentleman George's shoe is known by all his pals. It used to bring him luck, and when he'd be caught and searched he used to beg to have it back. I carry a rabbit's foot."