It was in this deepest abyss in the valley of disheartenment that I met a former prison-mate named Kellow; a forger whose time of release from the penitentiary coincided nearly with my own. The meeting was wholly by chance. I was crossing one of the city bridges at night, pointing for one of the river warehouses where I hoped to find a tramp's lodging and shelter from the bitter wind, when I walked blindly into a man coming in the opposite direction. The recognition was instant and mutual.
Like myself, Kellow had been a "trusty," and under certain relaxations of the rule of silence in the prison we had talked and an acquaintance of a sort had slowly grown and ripened. In this intimacy, which I had striven to hold at arm's length, I had come to know the forger as a criminal of the most dangerous breed; a man of parts and of some education, but wholly lacking in the moral sense; a rule-keeper in prison only because he was shrewd enough to appreciate the fact that he was bringing the day of release nearer by piling up "good-conduct" time.
"Well, pinch me! Look who's here!" was his greeting when we met on the bridge.
For a silent moment it was I who did the looking. Kellow had grown a pair of curling black mustaches since his release; he was well-dressed, erect and alert, and was smoking a cigar the fragrance of which made me sick and faint with an attack of the long-denied tobacco hunger.
"You're out, too, are you?" I managed to say at last, shivering in the cold blast which came sweeping up the river.
"Three months, and then some," he returned jauntily. "I'm collecting a little on the old debt now, and doing fairly well at it, thank you."
"The old debt?" I queried.
"Yep; the one that the little old round world owes every man: three squares, a tailor, a bed and a pocket-roll."
"You look as if you had acquired all four," I agreed, setting my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.
"Sure I have; and you look as if you hadn't," he countered. And then: "What's the matter? Just plain hard luck? Or is it the parole scare?"