I was dumb, ashamed and sorry to have unwittingly hurt my friend. But now he was speaking again, in his accustomed sober, emotionless voice.
"Of course, I trust you absolutely, Jack. I'd like to tell you the whole story. But—I am not free to talk——"
"You don't have to tell me anything," I blurted. "I know you are my man, and you know I am your man."
"You are a friend!" he exclaimed. "But I will not sail under false colors in your eyes, lad. I am a jail-bird, an escaped felon."
"Oh, I knew all about that long ago," I said, carelessly.
He looked his surprise.
"I heard that bum's story through the wall, that night in the Knitting Swede's," I explained. "I didn't try to listen, but I couldn't help hearing him. About the frame-up they worked on you—Beulah Twigg, and Mary—that's the lady, isn't it?—and the one Beasley called 'he'—I know 'he' is Yankee Swope. Oh, it was a dirty trick they played on you, Newman. I'm with you in anything you do to get even."
He shook his head, smiling. "What a young savage you are, Jack!" says he. "An eye for an eye, eh? But you guess wrongly, lad. That treachery you heard Beasley explain was but the beginning. I was sent to prison for a murder, the brutal and cowardly murder of a helpless old man."
"I know it was a frame-up," I cried. "And, anyway, I don't care. I know you're on the square, and that is all that matters with me."
"If I were not, your faith would make me on the square," he answered. "But—I was not guilty. I came on board the Golden Bough intending to become a murderer—but that madness is past. Now I am anxious to prevent killing—any killing. Now I am determined to preserve peace in this ship.