to wealth and fame than we two could.  And then, when we have made our fortune, I will want you to come back with us to Rugby and stay with us, even if you have to buy for yourself a prairie farm, for I know mother will wish that you stop with us, because she will always thank you for having taken such good care of her Joe.”  After he had given vent to this boyish dream he paused, expecting to receive an answer from his older companion, but Slippery only nodded in assent, while at the same time he rubbed his eyes with his hands as if tiny cinders had lodged in them.  His emotions caused him to avert his face so Joe could not see the tears of repentance which his hurting conscience forced to run down his cheeks.  And then his better self got the master hand over him and he silently swore that at this moment had arrived the oft wished for opportunity for him to forsake the road and quit the crooked game of crime.

Now came Slippery’s time to make plans.  His first thoughts were to discover the best method to fullfil the promise he had just made to himself to lead a new and different life.  The best method as it appeared to him would be for Joe and himself to ramble on to Chicago and there procure employment, as he realized that to separate from his younger companion would mean to him a rapid drifting back into his old ways.  This plan looked mighty good and he slyly chuckled as he thought that it would be only a short time until his pay envelope would bulge from the sum to which his wage would quickly increase, for he felt assured that it would be an easy matter for him to be advanced into an ever better salaried position, for a man who had the nerve to attempt to force a living for himself from the world by means of the dangerous ways of crime could easily accomplish anything once his perverted ambitions were directed into the straight and narrow path.  But suddenly his smiles ceased and he felt a queer shuddering sensation shake his spine, for he thought of the many criminals who made their headquarters in Chicago, and who would be only too willing to spoil his plans to quit their company and reform, so as to keep others of the brotherhood from quitting the game and thereby making it all the more hazardous for hardened and irreformable criminals to ply their nefarious vocations.  He weighed the chances he stood to reform in Chicago and abandoned the scheme as impracticable.

Then Slippery recalled Jim’s narrative of his lone prairie section home, and he adroitly questioned the lad and discovered that the country about Rugby was a desolate prairie, that post offices and banks were few, widely scattered and poorly patronized, and that Joe had never heard of any one of these being robbed, nor even a residence or farm house being entered, and when the lad finished by telling of the fertility of the soil and the fact that homesteads could still be had there for the mere filing of the necessary claims, Slippery again became absorbed in his thoughts.