A strange yearning to join those who carried the dinner pails and who had homes and firesides of their own made itself felt, and still later this desire to foreswear his past and reform became ever stronger, especially when one day by a singular chance he happened during recess to pass a school house, and stepping behind a tree from where with a wistful look in his eyes he watched the rosy-cheeked, romping children, while at the same time revolting pictures of his own misspent life and thoughts of the far worse to-be-spent future, and the fact that he had been heretofore his own worst enemy came so strongly to his mind that he could barely keep himself from sobbing.

From that evening when he for the first time in his whole life, studied the life of a yegg from a commonsense and strictly commercial side and found it in all its phases a losing game, dated the desire to quit the life of crime when the first opportunity presented itself, but whenever he tried to picture himself as having a happy home of his own, there, like a black cloud suspended in a blue sky, came to him the knowledge that never more could he hide his past, for from the moment that he should endeavor to walk the narrow path, every yegg in the land would point to him as a former brother-in-crime, and gossiping tongues would quickly force him back into the fold, even while with his calloused hands he would be toiling to earn an honest living.

While all of these pictures of his past flashed through his active mind and the desire to be for just one time, a man who needed not to be afraid to associate with honest people, he attentively listened to the boy who was just now unfolding his plans for a bright future, and who was telling about his section home by the side of the railroad track in the midst of the endless prairies of the Dakotas, and although he described the siding of Rugby as being a most desolate place, the desire to reform became almost irresistible to Slippery when Joe told how every evening the railroad laborers returned to their humble quarters worn and tired out by the hard toil of the day, but happy with the satisfaction that by performing their task they had added their share to the world’s work for the common good of all humanity.

This was the boy of whose most unwelcome company only a few minutes before Slippery had wished to rid himself as he considered him a serious handicap to his career as a professional criminal, and who was now telling of his plans, how he wished to atone by leading an honest life for the wrong he had done to his widowed mother by leaving his home without her consent, and as he continued to speak of his hopes of a clean and glorious living, the same queer feeling that had attacked him before came with ever increasing force over Slippery, and it almost stunned him when the lad with his true-ringing, youthful voice, exclaimed, “Slippery, you are going to be my partner, for all of us working together can accomplish much more in Chicago to make our way