During the three weeks Graves had been confined in jail, prior to his plea and sentence, he had thought over his misdeeds, recognized his mistakes and formed the most strenuous resolutions of betterment. He was determined, then, to live a better life; but as he could not live while in prison, but merely "do time," he was compelled, of course, to wait a year before he could begin life anew. During the eleven months he spent in the penitentiary he had tried to keep these resolutions fresh, strong and ever clear before him. This was a difficult thing to do, for his mind was weakened by the confinement, and his moral sense was constantly clouded by the examples that were placed before him. On Sundays, in the chapel, he heard the chaplain preach, but during the week the guards stole the comforts his mother sent to him before she died, the contractors and the prison officials were grafting and stealing from the state provisions, household furniture, liquors, wines, and every other sort of thing; one of the prison officials supplied his brother’s drug store with medicines and surgical appliances from the prison hospital. Besides all this, the punishments he was compelled at times to witness--the water-cure, the paddle, the electric battery, the stringing up by the wrists, not to mention the loathsome practices of the convicts themselves--benumbed and appalled him, until he shuddered with terror lest his mind give way. But all these things, he felt, would be at an end if he could keep his reason and his health, and live to the end of his term. Then he could leave them all behind and go out into the world and begin life anew. Graves came back to town during those last glorious days of the autumn, and the fact that he had no place to go was not so much a hardship. He did not care to show himself to his old friends until he had had opportunity to procure new clothes, and he felt that he was started on the way to this rehabilitation when almost immediately he found a place trucking merchandise for a wholesale house in Front Street. He felt encouraged; his luck, he told himself, was good, and for three days he was happy in his work. Then, one morning, he noticed a policeman; the policeman stood on the sidewalk, watching Graves roll barrels down the skids from a truck. The policeman stood there a good while, and then he spoke to the driver, admired the magnificent horses that were hitched to the truck, patted their glossy necks, picked up some sugar that had been spilled from a burst barrel and let the horses lick the sugar from the palm of his hand. The horses tossed their heads playfully as they did this, and, meanwhile, the policeman glanced every few minutes at Graves. Presently, he went into the wholesale house, and through the window Graves saw him talking to the manager. That evening the manager paid Graves for his three days’ work and discharged him.