"You'll not disturb me," answered Harry. "As it happens, I am occupied too." The stranger laughed--a rather eager, boyish laugh which caught Harry with a subtle tang of old acquaintance. With the pen in his hand, he was staring curiously at that ruddy cheek and its slanting scar, his mind following something elusive and far away. He was feeling the edge of a half-recollection, vague and shadowy and dream-like, of a saw-dust bar-room floor lighted with flaring lamps, of ribald conversation, of a deal table across which a face like that had looked at him. But the memory at which he grasped had belonged to that phase of intoxication in which sense-impression had left no enduring record, and he could not capture it. John Stark was unconscious of the fixed gaze. He had opened the valise upon a chair and now was laying its contents upon another. Harry saw with surprise that these included a striped jacket and trousers, flat peaked cap and heavy hob-nailed shoes such as each inmate of the prison wore. Last he took out a flat tin box which opened out in two sections, and set it on the end of the desk. It was a "make-up" box of the stage dressing-room, and the sight of its tiny compartments, holding rouge, lamp-black, powder and grease-paint, the pencils and hare's foot, brought back to Harry with a rush old days of amateur theatricals and society stagery. These articles laid out, the other began rapidly to undress. He chuckled as, turning, he caught the look of puzzle on Harry's face. "I'm not really crazy," he said laughingly. "The fact is, I'm trying an experiment--with the Warden's permission. For half an hour I'm going to take my place with those fellows down there;"--he nodded towards the window--"going in to supper with them. I have a bet on with the Deputy Warden that I can do it so that none of the Superintendents will spot me!" He had discarded shirt, collar and shoes, and was now arraying himself in the coarse striped garments and clumsy foot-wear. He looked himself over half-humorously. "Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I swear, it gives me the creeps. This is the real stuff, you see! I don't get the true spirit of the thing when I play it." "When you play it?" repeated Harry, inquiringly. "Oh," said the other. "I ought to explain. I'm starring in 'The Jail Bird'--the play that's on here this week. I have the title-role. It's a fad with me to get up my 'business' first-hand, and this institution is too good a chance to miss. It's mighty good press-agent stuff for the local papers, incidentally!" The lid of the tin box was a mirror, and propping this upright, he now busied himself with the facial make-up, applying a greyish grease-paint which obliterated the scar on the cheek and lent the requisite pallor, and deepening this with darker pencilled shades. In the midst of his labour he asked: "Have you seen the piece?" "No," said Harry, grimly. "Our business here interferes somewhat with our evening pleasures."