Think of it! That fellow Monohan could get twenty years! It made him mad, this infernal conspiracy, as it seemed to him, between judges and prosecutors. It mattered little, apparently, whether they got the right man or not, so long as they got someone! What business had they to go and convict a fellow who was innocent, and put him, "Jim," the cleverest "gun" in the profession, in such a position? He wondered if folks in other lines of business had so many problems to face. The stupidity of witnesses and the trickery of lawyers was almost beyond belief. It was a perennial contest, not only of wit against wit, strategy against strategy, but, worst of all, of wit against impenetrable dulness. Why, if people were going to be so careless about swearing a man's liberty away, it was time to "get on the level." You might be nailed any time by mistake, and then your record would make any defence impossible. You had the right to demand common honesty, or, at least, _intelligence_, on the part of the prosecution. But the main question was, What was going to become of Monohan? Well, the boy was convicted, and that was the end of it. It was quite clear to Jim that, had he been victimized in the same way, no one would have bothered about it at all. It was simply the fortune of war. But twenty years! His own pitiful aggregate of six, with vacations in between, as it were, looked infinitesimal beside that awful burial alive. He'd be fifty when he came out--if he ever came out! Sometimes they died like flies in a hot summer. And then there was always Dannemora--worst of all, Dannemora! It would kill _him_ to go back. He couldn't live away from the main stem _now_. Why, he hadn't been in _stir_ for five years. All his prison traits, the gait, the hunch, were effaced--gone completely. His brows contracted in a sharp frown. "What's the use?" he muttered as he rose to go. "He ain't worth it! I can stake his wife and kids till his time's up! But, God! _I_ could never go back!" Yet the same irresistible force which had directed him to the court-room the day before, now led him to the Grand Central Station. Like one walking in a dream, he bought a ticket and took the noon train alone to Ossining.