A bailiff rapped for order.  One of the jurymen leaned close to a neighbor and whispered.  “A hardened criminal,” he said.  “Society will be safer when he is behind the bars.”

The next day they took Billy aboard a train bound for Joliet.  He was handcuffed to a deputy sheriff.  Billy was calm outwardly; but inwardly he was a raging volcano of hate.

In a certain very beautiful home on Riverside Drive, New York City, a young lady, comfortably backed by downy pillows, sat in her bed and alternated her attention between coffee and rolls, and a morning paper.

On the inside of the main sheet a heading claimed her languid attention:  Chicago murderer given life sentence.  Of late Chicago had aroused in Barbara Harding a greater proportion of interest than ever it had in the past, and so it was that she now permitted her eyes to wander casually down the printed column.

Murderer of harmless old saloon keeper is finally brought to justice.  The notorious West Side rowdy, “Billy” Byrne, apprehended after more than a year as fugitive from justice, is sent to Joliet for life.

Barbara Harding sat stony-eyed and cold for what seemed many minutes.  Then with a stifled sob she turned and buried her face in the pillows.

The train bearing Billy Byrne and the deputy sheriff toward Joliet had covered perhaps half the distance between Chicago and Billy’s permanent destination when it occurred to the deputy sheriff that he should like to go into the smoker and enjoy a cigar.

Now, from the moment that he had been sentenced Billy Byrne’s mind had been centered upon one thought—­escape.  He knew that there probably would be not the slightest chance for escape; but nevertheless the idea was always uppermost in his thoughts.

His whole being revolted, not alone against the injustice which had sent him into life imprisonment, but at the thought of the long years of awful monotony which lay ahead of him.

He could not endure them.  He would not!  The deputy sheriff rose, and motioning his prisoner ahead of him, started for the smoker.  It was two cars ahead.  The train was vestibuled.  The first platform they crossed was tightly enclosed; but at the second Billy saw that a careless porter had left one of the doors open.  The train was slowing down for some reason—­it was going, perhaps, twenty miles an hour.

Billy was the first upon the platform.  He was the first to see the open door.  It meant one of two things—­a chance to escape, or, death.  Even the latter was to be preferred to life imprisonment.

Billy did not hesitate an instant.  Even before the deputy sheriff realized that the door was open, his prisoner had leaped from the moving train dragging his guard after him.

CHAPTER II

THE ESCAPE

Byrne had no time to pick any particular spot to jump for.  When he did jump he might have been directly over a picket fence, or a bottomless pit—­he did not know.  Nor did he care.