and when one of the crew had his chest broken open, and some things missing, they laid it to me. I was innocent, but they wouldn't believe it, and the character I had got went against me, and I wasn't spared a bit. The captain abused me, the mate rope's-ended me, and the men kicked me and called me jail-bird, until I was more miserable than a dog. My whole feelings were changed. I got bitter and revengeful, and if it hadn't been that I couldn't get away I would have knived some of my shipmates. When the vessel touched at the Sandwich Islands, I ran away and knocked about with the beach-combers, a wicked set of outcasts, until I became bad as any of them. I lived among the Islands several years. I shipped again, ran down to Valparaiso, and made several voyages up and down the coast. One day I got into a drunken row in a pulqueria, and stabbed a Chilian. This caused me to be sent to work in the mines as a convict. I got away from there after staying three years and shipped in a French ship to Bordeaux, and from there I got to New York. I hadn't been in the States for ten years, and all that time I hadn't heard anything from my folks. I had become so reckless as to have no wish to see any of them. When in New York I went one night to a dance-house in Cherry Street, and there among the women I found my sister. We didn't know each other at first, but I discovered her by a queer scar on her neck, which she got from a burn when a child. After questioning her, I found out that my mother took on so about me that she left Belton soon after I did, and went to New York. There she fell sick, and died in want, and there was my sister a degraded creature. What little good was left in me was turned by this sight into bad, and I swore to be even with a world that had been so unjust to me and mine. The old feeling of vengeance rose up in my breast--the devil got hold of me, and I thought of Cook. That night I started off to find him, and went to Belton. I hung around there till I found out he was dead and gone some years. If he had been living I would have killed him, sure. All that's wrong, I know, but I couldn't help it. Then I felt just like waging war on all the world. I went to California, and kept a drinking shop on what they called the Barbary coast, where I used to rob miners. Finally I shot one that showed fight, and the Vigilance Committee drove me off, and I came back to the States and went to New Orleans, staid awhile, and came north. I knocked around New York for a time, and finally shipped on the smack, where I committed the deed that's brought me here. The world has got the best of me at last, and it was very wrong and sinful for me to kill the men, and it is right that I should suffer for it