He looked the Governor steadily in the eyes as he spoke and the other, a keen judge of men, with a knowledge, bred of long life and observation, of the workings of the human conscience, felt a strange inclination to believe. Yet for every criminal there must be a first crime. Given a good family name and the remnant of a conscience, the man's insistence could be accounted for! With a little sigh he turned to Mason. "Shall I see you at the Castlemans to-night?" he asked as they shook hands. "I'm dining at the Langhams," Mason replied. "It's a farewell dinner for Miss Allen." "A charming girl, Echo!" said the Governor. "I've known her since she was a child. A farewell, did you say? Is her visit over?" "Yes, she's off to Europe to-morrow." The lawyer went with the Governor to the door and stood a moment looking after him as he crossed the lawn to his carriage. He did not see the look that had suddenly slipped to the face of the man standing behind him--a look mingled of sudden wonder and questioning disquiet. To Europe! Echo? Was she going away now ... knowing it all ... knowing what he had passed through, what lay before him? Going without written word or secret sign to him? Harry felt a strange sinking of the heart. It seemed to him as if a cold shadow had suddenly fallen across the room--a shadow in which lurked something vague and formless, something whose existence his faith denied, yet which stood silently staring at him with a cruel and terrifying smile. CHAPTER XXVII THE END OF THE JOURNEY Some miles beyond the skirt of the city, on the dusty highway, stood a vast wall of stone built four-square, along whose top, seen breast-high, men in dingy _khaki_ patrolled back and forth with rifles on their shoulders. Fronting the road was a great barred gate, with an arched top, set in the wall. This opened on a narrow paved court at one side of which was a two storied frame building, whose door was marked with the word "warden." Before this door the next afternoon Harry Sevier stood with a sheriff. The latter knocked and a heavy-featured man came out. "Well, Warden," said the sheriff, "I've brought you another boarder. Here's his papers." The other examined the documents, took a fountain-pen from his pocket and signed one--a form of receipt--and handed it back. "All right," he said briefly, and rushing open the door, motioned the new arrival to enter. When Harry emerged, an hour later, under the care of a uniformed turn-key, he wore trousers and jacket of coarse fulled cloth with horizontal stripes of black and yellowish-grey--the badge of the convict. Under his visored cap his crisp black hair had been clipped close to the skin. And in the upper office a trusty who acted as clerk was filling in on an indexed card the physical measurements which, with the number he wore on a leathern strap about his upper arm, constituted the formula by which hereafter was to be known the man who had once been Harry Sevier.