“Yes; I heard this evening that you had been parolled.”
Nolan coughed again.
“It’d have been murder to keep me in any longer,” he said. “One lung’s gone as it is. Th’ doctor told th’ board I’d be dead inside o’ six months if I wasn’t let out.”
And, indeed, as Allan looked at him more closely, he could see the change in him. He was thinner and his face had a ghastly pallor, revolting to see. An experienced police officer would have recognized the prison pallor at a glance—the pallor which all criminals acquire who serve a term in jail; but to Allan it seemed proof positive of the progress of his old enemy’s disease, and his heart was stirred with pity.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “I hope you’ll get well, now you’re out again.”
Nolan shook his head lugubriously.
“Not much hope o’ that, I guess,” he answered. “Arter all, it’s no more’n I deserve fer treatin’ you th’ way I did.”
Allan stared at him in astonishment. Repentance was the last thing he had ever expected of Nolan, and he scarcely knew how to answer.
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad as that,” he managed to say, at last.
“It’s mighty kind o’ you t’ say so,” replied Nolan, humbly, “but I know better. I tell you, durin’ th’ last three months, arter I was locked up in my cell every night, I had plenty o’ time t’ think things over, an’ I begun t’ see what a blamed skunk I’d been.”