"He was the whitest guy I ever met. He staked me and I stuck to him, and worked with him until he got shot dead the night I got this scar you see. Believe me, Kid, Morgan was the smoothest blower that ever lifted the front off a safe--and I want to tell you, Lutts, when I'm outside I ain't ragged and hungry any more--not me--and I don't mix with tin-horn trash like Blinky and this gang in here. I live right, Lutts, when I'm out. I got twenty-three hundred bucks planted right this minute, where no one will get it but me--at that, Lutts, I'd go back and work for five dollars a week if I could, but I know I can't--there's no turning back for an old-timer--he's gone. "I know as well as I know I'm talkin' now, that in the end they'll plant me in the potter's field, and the chances are that I won't die natural--they wouldn't even let a guy like me into a decent graveyard--the life has big draw-backs--and when you get out, Lutts, you remember the advice from a party that knows--you side-step anything that looks crooked--even if you do see ready money--you blow it--it's a boomerang--I'd rather die a beggar than a rich thief--blow it, Lutts--it ain't too late for you--if you don't come back. Say, Lutts, you must be hungry--I know you didn't eat anything downstairs--wait a minute----" Last Time broke off abruptly, and slipped into his cell. He returned with a paper sack which he thrust through the bars to Lem. "Here's some crackers and cream cheese--the bull gave it to me--you eat it all--I got all I want. Hello--there goes the quarter--the lights 'll go out in fifteen minutes. 'Creepin' Jesus' 'll wake up now. I got to bring the night bull's lunch from the kitchen and take the towels over to the Hospital, and turn the hot water off at the bath house, and a string of other old-woman stunts before they lock me up--so-long." CHAPTER XIII RUBRIC DROPS Lem ate the cheese and crackers thrust upon him by the generous convict, more to assuage the acute pangs of hunger that now assailed him than to indulge his palate, the while he pondered over the convict's story. Suddenly the electric lights went out and left his cell in darkness save a glimmer across the corridor. The scores of obstreperous, profane tongues that had scathed the fetid atmosphere now subsided, and Lem sank on the side of his cot and gazed with empty eyes between the bars at the dim light across the stone hall, and the full force of his unlucky predicament rushed upon him again. This gas jet, which burned all night, was some fifteen feet from the corridor floor, bringing it up to a level with the tier porch. The jet flung a faint, orange-hued ray obliquely toward Lem's cell door. Although he was mentally worn out and weary of body, still he could not bring himself to lie down. Finally, he took the straw pillow from his cot, placed it on the cement floor close to the door, and sat down with his mind astray and his unseeing eyes fixed blankly upon the gas light.