His smile was beatific. "No, it isn't," he denied. "You know you couldn't do it; you couldn't bring yourself to do it. Maybe, in the heat of passion … but to go deliberately: no, Weyburn; if you think you could do such a thing as that, I can tell you that I know you better than you know yourself."
"I merely said that that was what I ought to do. I know well enough that I shan't do it, but the reason is far beneath that which you are good enough to hint at. I'm a broken man, Whitley; what I have gone through in the past few months has smashed my nerve. You can't understand that—I don't expect you to. But if I should meet those two old men when I leave this house, I should probably run away from them and try to hide."
"But what will you do?" he queried.
"What can I do, more than I've been doing?"
Again a silence intervened.
"I wish I knew how to advise you," Whitley said at length. "If there were only some way in which you might shake off this wretched hired spy!"
"I can't. If I dodge him, he has only to wait until I report myself again to the prison authorities. The one thing I can do is to relieve you of my threatening presence, and I'll do that now—to-night, while the going is good."
He was at the end of his resources, as I knew he must be, and he made no objections. But at train-time he got up and put on his overcoat to accompany me as far as the station. It was a rough night outside, and I tried to dissuade him, but he wouldn't have it that way. "No," he said; "it's my privilege to speed the parting guest, if I can do no more than that," and so we breasted the spitting snow-storm which was sweeping the empty streets, tramping in silence until we reached the shelter of the train-shed.
It was after the train had whistled for the crossing below the town that Whitley asked me again what I intended doing. I answered him frankly because it was his due.
"It has come down to one of two things: day-labor, in a field where a man is merely a number on the pay-roll—or that other road which is always open to the prison-bird."