The paroled man took the fat hand proffered him because he knew the warden was a sincere humanitarian.  He meant exactly what he said.  Perhaps he could not help the touch of condescension.  But patronage, no matter how kindly meant, was one thing this tall, straight convict would not stand.  He was quite civil, but the hard, cynical eyes made the warden uncomfortable.  Once or twice before he had known prisoners like this, quiet, silent men who were never insolent, but whose eyes told him that the iron had seared their souls.

The voice of the warden dropped briskly to business.  “Seen the bookkeeper?  Everything all right, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.  Well, wish you luck.”

“Thanks.”

The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling.

The prison officer’s eyes followed him a little wistfully.  His function, as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds.  They were not wild beasts.  They were human beings who had made a misstep.  Sometimes he had been able to influence men strongly, but he felt that it had not been true of this puncher from the cow country.

Sanders walked slowly out of the office and through the door in the wall that led back to life.  He was free.  To-morrow was his.  All the to-morrows of all the years of his life were waiting for him.  But the fact stirred in him no emotion.  As he stood in the dry Colorado sunshine his heart was quite dead.

In the earlier days of his imprisonment it had not been so.  He had dreamed often of this hour.  At night, in the darkness of his cell, imagination had projected picture after picture of it, vivid, colorful, set to music.  But his parole had come too late.  The years had taken their toll of him.  The shadow of the prison had left its chill, had done something to him that had made him a different David Sanders from the boy who had entered.  He wondered if he would ever learn to laugh again, if he would ever run to meet life eagerly as that other David Sanders had a thousand years ago.

He followed the road down to the little station and took a through train that came puffing out of the Royal Gorge on its way to the plains.  Through the crowd at the Denver depot he passed into the city, moving up Seventeenth Street without definite aim or purpose.  His parole had come unexpectedly, so that none of his friends could meet him even if they had wanted to do so.  He was glad of this.  He preferred to be alone, especially during these first days of freedom.  It was his intention to go back to Malapi, to the country he knew and loved, but he wished to pick up a job in the city for a month or two until he had settled into a frame of mind in which liberty had become a habit.

Early next morning he began his search for work.  It carried him to a lumber yard adjoining the railroad yards.

“We need a night watchman,” the superintendent said.  “Where’d you work last?”