This statement, as I take it, is a pretty fair definition of selfishness of any and every description. As most motives take color from the acts from which they spring or to which they relate, it follows that the "honor" which we are pleased to think of as existing between rogues, is in reality a something which is prompted by a due regard for the persons or the purses of the self-same individuals. This distinguishes the honor that obtains in the Under World from that which is mostly in evidence in the Over World. In the latter instance the factor of one's good name or character is involved; it is absent in the former. From this characterization you will infer, as I intend you shall, that the "honor" of the Powers that Prey is but a poor sort of a thing after all, and is, as I have intimated, but personal interest more or less thinly disguised. Still, sometimes the disguise is so clever that it looks like the real thing--to the outsider; but "wise" people rarely fail in tracing the reasons which prompt a rogue to refuse to give away a pal. Even when his doing so means a long term in prison as against immunity if he would only use his tongue to "peach" on his associate and therefore cause that person's conviction. In such cases the newspapers, so I've noticed, are apt to give the mum one a species of glorification _which is never deserved_. I want the words set up in italics; they deserve that distinction. Let me repeat, the crook who cannot be got to "flash" on his gang, either by the third degree at the "Front Office"--the often brutal inquisition at police headquarters--the prison chaplain, or the district attorney's staff, is never dumb because his "honor" prompts him to remain so. It is his self-interest that bids him keep his mouth shut. Some seven years ago, a bank in a little New Jersey town, about fifty miles due west of New York, was one night "done up" in good shape. The "peter-men," of whom there were four, secured something like eighteen thousand dollars in greenbacks, to say nothing of a bunch of negotiable papers and a couple of small jewel safes, weighing about a hundred pounds each. The rich residents of the locality used to store their sunbursts, tiaras and rings in these safes, which, by the way, were kept in the main safe of the bank. This was known to the gang who turned the trick, and the big safe proving easy, the little ones "fell" in consequence.