“I didn't marry, as you may know, until I was thirty-four. My wife was the daughter of a small merchant in an Oregon village. I had been married about a year when the first pirate fired across my bows--a man who had worked beside me at Joliet. I found him in my office one morning. He didn't know how much money I had, and struck me gently, softly, for a thousand dollars. It was to be a loan. I gave him the money; I had to. Why? Well, you see, my wife didn't know that I was an ex-convict, and I couldn't bear to have her know of it. I did not fear her so much as her friends, some of whom were jealous of our success. Why hadn't I told her before my marriage? you are thinking. Well, partly because I honored my father and my mother, and partly because I had no sense of guilt in me. Secretly I was rather proud of the thing I had done. If I had been really guilty of a crime I should have had to tell her; but, you see, my heart was clean--just as clean as she thought it. I hadn't fooled her about that. There had been nothing coming to me. Oh yes, I know that I ought to have told her. I'm only giving you the arguments with which I convinced myself--with which even now I try to convince myself--that it wasn't necessary. Anyhow, when I married it never entered my head that there could be a human being so low that he would try to fan back to life the dying embers of my trouble and use it for a source of profit. It never occurred to me that any man would come along and say: 'Here, give me money or I'll make it burn ye.' “I foolishly thought that my sacrifice was my own property, and was beginning to forget it. Well, first to last, this man got forty thousand dollars out of me. He was dying of consumption when he made his last call, having spent the money in fast living. He wanted five thousand dollars, and promised never to ask me for another cent. He kept his word, and died within three months, but not until he had sold his pull to another scoundrel. The new pirate was an advertising agent of the Far West. He came to me with the whole story in manuscript, ready to print. He said that he had bought it from two men who had brought the manuscript to his office, and had paid five thousand dollars for it. He was such a nice man!--willing to sell at cost and a small allowance for time expended. I gave him all he asked, and since then I have been buying that story every six months or so. When anything happens, like the coming out of my daughter, this sleek-looking, plausible pirate shows up again, and, you see, I can't kick him out of my presence, as I should like to do. He always tells me that the mysterious two are demanding more money, so, like a bull with a ring in his nose, I have been pulled about for years by this little knave of a man. I couldn't help it. Now my nerves cannot endure any more of this kind of thing. My doctor tells me that I must be free from all worry; I propose to turn it over to you.”