“Bank on it, cull—bank on it. They’ll never jimmy a word of it outer me.”
“Thanks,” said Clarence Sage, taking the single chair which the lockup contained and seating himself near the cot. “That relieves my mind in a measure. Fred’s a fine boy, and it would be a shame to have suspicion fall on him. My misfortune has cast enough stigma on my unfortunate family.”
“Say, ’bo, there’s just one thing about you that I don’t like. You don’t have to put up this misfortune bluff to me. Course it’s always hard luck when we get laid by the heels on any little job, but seems to me you’re throwing it out that you was on the level.”
“I was,” asserted Clarence Sage grimly, almost fiercely. “I was arrested, tried and convicted for a crime I never committed. If this were not true, I wouldn’t think of saying so now. Somebody else looted the bank, and I believe I know the man. It was on his testimony principally that I was convicted. He saved himself, but the knowledge that he sent an innocent man to Sing Sing may possibly have caused him some uneasy and regretful moments.”
“Well,” said Riley slowly, as he narrowly eyed his fellow prisoner, “you spiels it like you was talking gospel. Mebbe it’s true.”
“It is true,” asserted Clarence Sage. “Think what it meant, Riley, not only to me, but to my people. I have the finest mother a boy ever had. The thought of her shame and suffering has been gall and wormwood to me.”
“My old mother,” said Riley, with a touch of sentiment, “was dead and buried before I was pinched the first time, thank Heaven!”
Sage bowed his head and spoke in a low tone, his gaze fixed upon the floor.
“It was to get another look at my mother’s face that I returned to Oakdale. I was here a week ago, and I went away without obtaining a glimpse of her. In all the years that I was supposed to be dead I have carried her image in my heart, and it was the knowledge of her faith in me—for she never believed me guilty—that kept me straight, I believe. I’ve knocked about in many places and associated with all sorts of men, some of them honest, but many more who were crooks. I’ve roughed it in Alaska, sailed before the mast, starved and nearly died from fever in the Philippines, tried my hand at coal mining in Australia; and through it all the knowledge of my mother’s faith has kept me straight, even though I’ve had many a chance to turn a good thing by crookedness. At last, believing there was little danger, I came back and hunted for my people. I found them here, and here I have likewise found my undoing.”
“Tough luck,” said Riley again. “They’ll send you back to the jug.”