The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the deputy-sheriff.
"Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?"
"They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a concrete cell as anywhere else."
Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he held them out—to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this."
The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief—that's what I am now! When I want money I'll steal it!"
The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what for!"
Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow—as did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse—to a blighting, tentacled thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry.
He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream.
"Home now, Bob," he said, heavily.