HE, 
 
 QUARK
 
 THE QUARRY
 
 I. 
 
 JP *',A ^^ 
 
 " There is a gentleman here who desires to see me on some 
 
 business." 
 
 FRONTISPIECE. See Page 300.
 
 THE QUARRY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN A. MOROSO 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 THOMAS FOGARTY
 
 Copyright, 1913, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All righto reserved 
 
 Published, April, 1913 
 Reprinted, April, 1913 
 
 THE COLONIAL, PRESS 
 C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. 8. A.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " There is a gentleman here who desires 
 
 to see me on some business " . Frontispiece 
 
 " What can I do for you, ma'am?" asked 
 
 Kearney, half turning from his plate Page 29 
 
 A creature that seemed more a reptile 
 than a human wriggled from the 
 cross-ties and disappeared in the 
 marsh " Il8 
 
 She fell back from him for a moment, the 
 
 shadows enshrouding her ..." 278
 
 THE QUARRY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HAT'S the charge, lieutenant?" 
 
 "Murder." 
 
 Inspector Ranscombe, in charge of 
 the central office of New York's police depart- 
 ment, gave the prisoner before him a second and 
 more searching glance, his keen, gray eyes taking 
 in every line of his features, the arch of brow, the 
 formation of the ears, the jaw angle, the lips, 
 chin, nostrils, the cheek-bones and the eyes. 
 
 The prisoner straightened his well-formed 
 shoulders as he returned the glance. He stood 
 with a pair of thin and soiled hands clasped before 
 him. There was a glint of steel at the wrists, 
 the sleeves of his coat only partly hiding the 
 manacles that shamed him. His clothes were
 
 2 THE QUARRY 
 
 those of a boy from the country, and he wore them 
 awkwardly in the bright, sunny room of the 
 chief of the city's detectives, where everything 
 was spick and span and the uniforms of the 
 office staff as trim and fresh as though just from 
 the department's tailoring contractor. 
 
 Ranscombe, a man beyond the half century 
 mark, short and at times brutal in his speech, 
 his heavy jaw and bristling white mustache sug- 
 gesting latent ferocity, felt a little twinge at his 
 heart as he told himself that this youth bore none 
 of the marks of the born criminal. 
 
 " What's your name, boy? " he asked sharply. 
 
 " James Montgomery," was the answer, husk- 
 ily given. 
 
 " How old are you? " 
 
 " Twenty-one." 
 
 "Guilty?" 
 
 Montgomery shook his head as his lips trem- 
 bled and the denial of guilt refused to leave them. 
 
 The inspector turned to the detective lieu- 
 tenant in charge of the prisoner. 
 
 " What is it, Kearney? " he asked. " A street 
 quarrel? " 
 
 " No, sir; bank watchman killed; he's a yegg."
 
 THE QUARRY 3 
 
 "A yegg!" 
 
 " Yes, sir. The West Side National Bank was 
 blown last night. The watchman was murdered. 
 Three men did the job. The policeman on the 
 beat heard the explosion and got this lad. The 
 other two rriade their get-away." 
 
 " You got a case here that won't fall down? " 
 
 " Yes, sir; it's a good case." 
 
 The inspector hesitated as if debating in his 
 mind whether to put the boy through an exam- 
 ination. It was the first hour of the day's work 
 and his desk was piled high with reports needing 
 his attention. A score of his picked men were 
 waiting a chance to report personally on various 
 important cases. Lieutenant Kearney seldom 
 needed aid from his chief. He was a detective of 
 experience and one who could safely be trusted 
 to clear up any case. 
 
 Ranscombe turned to the pile of documents on 
 his desk. 
 
 " Take him to the identification department 
 and go ahead with the case," he instructed the 
 detective. 
 
 The fingers of Kearney's right hand gathered 
 up the folds of his prisoner's sleeve until his
 
 4 THE QUARRY 
 
 grip became vicelike. He wheeled about and 
 started for the corridor, the boy half staggering 
 along with him. 
 
 In the main hall of the building they took a 
 rattling and palsied elevator to the top floor. 
 Here they entered a small, dingy room where 
 were scales, a large tripod with a camera topping 
 it, and an iron frame for holding in position the 
 head of the subject to be photographed. 
 
 Two identification experts in uniform took 
 the prisoner in hand and photographed him, 
 profile and full face. 
 
 Montgomery was then placed on a small 
 platform and his height measurement made. 
 One of the experts filled in an identification sheet 
 as the other took the length of the prisoner's 
 arms and legs, the circumference of the trunk 
 at the navel, and the hips and the chest measure- 
 ment. With a steel compass the measurement 
 between the base of the nose and the base of 
 the skull was made. The expert called off the 
 length and breadth of the right ear in a droning 
 voice. All the figures went down in ink on the 
 identification blank, a piece of white cardboard 
 six inches wide by four in length.
 
 THE QUARRY 5 
 
 The man at the desk put down his pen and left 
 his chair, advancing to the prisoner. He stopped 
 directly before him and fastened his eyes on 
 Montgomery's as if to hypnotize him. 
 
 The prisoner returned the gaze, his pupils 
 dilating as fear crept into his heart, a fear 
 that he could not define. He had not slept in 
 thirty-six hours and he had not eaten in twenty- 
 four. He felt as if his body were swaying, but 
 the clear, searching eyes so close to his seemed to 
 hold him to his heels. 
 
 Suddenly the eyes of the expert were with- 
 drawn and Montgomery regained control of 
 his senses. He saw the man back at his desk 
 and writing. He was putting into the record 
 the color of the prisoner's eyes, a description of 
 their shape and of whatever peculiarities he had 
 discovered in them. 
 
 In his weak and exhausted condition Mont- 
 gomery was easily bewildered. He was in a 
 state of mild stupefaction as the man with the 
 measuring instruments again began work. Soon 
 the expert's voice was droning out more measure- 
 ments. The length of the nose at the bridge, 
 its projection at the highest point and at the
 
 6 THE QUARRY 
 
 nostrils, the height and width and peculiarities 
 of the forehead, the shape of the chin, the nature 
 of the setting and filling of the teeth, their num- 
 ber and condition, the shape of the lobe of the 
 right ear and its border, the color of the hair and 
 its condition were all placed in the record that 
 would make James Montgomery a marked man 
 and easy police prey for the rest of his life. 
 
 Kearney unlocked the handcuffs. " Take off 
 your clothes," he ordered. 
 
 The naked lad was placed on the scales and 
 his weight taken. The left foot and the little 
 finger of the left hand were measured. The two 
 experts then examined every square inch of 
 the prisoner's body and made note of every mark, 
 mole, scar and cutaneous peculiarity. 
 
 As Montgomery feebly struggled back into 
 his home-fashioned underwear and poorly fitting 
 suit of clothes, the Bertillon men studied him 
 carefully and keenly, as if they were two con- 
 noisseurs at a county fair passing upon an es- 
 pecially interesting steer. They were seeking 
 material to fill in that part of the record carrying 
 the title line: " Peculiarities of Habit and Ac- 
 tion."
 
 THE QUARRY 7 
 
 They conferred in whispers and decided that 
 the prisoner belonged to the " dopey " class. He 
 was of good frame but appeared listless and weak. 
 They were not medical men and they could not 
 know that malnutrition was the cause of the 
 lad's feebleness and that misery of soul had sent 
 his manhood reeling over the ropes. 
 
 With the handcuffs clinking by his side, Kearney 
 took his man into an adjoining room where the 
 grip of the police would squeeze down on the 
 life of James Montgomery with the last possible 
 pound of pressure. 
 
 The prisoner was led to a desk on which was 
 a long, white form ruled into twelve rectangles. 
 A Bertillon man caught his wrists and pressed 
 his fingers down upon a marble slab covered with 
 printer's ink. The prints of all the fingers of each 
 hand were made in the record, and then prints 
 of the first joints of the four fingers were made 
 in other rectangles. A pen was handed the 
 prisoner and he was made to sign his name to the 
 sheet of paper. As he lifted the pen from the 
 paper, the Bertillon man grasped his right fore- 
 finger and made a separate record of it just under 
 the name.
 
 8 THE QUARRY 
 
 The police no longer depended on the name or 
 facial characteristics as a means of identifying 
 the prisoner. The name James Montgomery 
 meant little if anything now. But the little 
 whorls, " islands," parabolas and " breaks " show- 
 ing in the finger-prints in that record for- 
 ever tagged their man. He might grow old and 
 feeble and so change his appearance that even 
 his own brother would know him not, but the 
 finger-prints would never change; and no other 
 human born on earth would have the same little 
 circles in the skin, which nature so wonderfully 
 and strangely twists in separate designs for each 
 of the human species. 
 
 The police record of James Montgomery went 
 into the files and his pictures into the gallery of 
 rogues. 
 
 Kearney took his man back to the wheezy 
 elevator and below to the main floor. A short 
 flight of winding stairs took them to the basement 
 and a little prison known as " The Barrel." This 
 cramped and dark place would hold Montgomery 
 until he was arraigned before a magistrate and 
 the slow process of marching through the courts 
 to prison or liberty was begun. Here, beneath
 
 THE QUARRY 9 
 
 the level of the street, he could send no word to 
 lawyer or friend, and he was as far removed from 
 the saving benefits of the habeas corpus as if 
 he were existing before the signing of Magna 
 Carta. 
 
 Pending his arraignment in court, this citizen 
 of the United States was without one single trace 
 of consideration by the law which was written 
 for his protection. A habeas corpus writ might 
 find its way from the roof of the dingy building 
 in Mulberry Street to the front and rear doors, 
 but the " Barrel " in the basement was a strictly 
 and jealously guarded police institution. It 
 was sound-proof and the voice of a prisoner crying 
 out and demanding his right to be heard was as the 
 voice of a sparrow against the roar of the tempest.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE " Barrel " was aptly named, for no 
 tighter prison was ever fashioned over 
 or under ground. Only one prisoner ever 
 escaped from it, and he was the black sheep in 
 the family of a police lieutenant high in power 
 in the Lieutenants' Association. He did not have 
 to file the steel bars of his cell or bludgeon the 
 moribund turnkey. The doors were left open 
 for him and his way was clear. The details of 
 this escape are all written in the strangely com- 
 plex and fascinating history of the police depart- 
 ment of the City of New York. 
 
 A single gas-jet made a yellow smear in the 
 blackness of the " Barrel's " noonday and mid- 
 night. The turnkey was often away from his 
 post, sunning himself in winter, chatting with 
 the headquarters reporters from their shanty- 
 offices across Mulberry Street, or in the corridors 
 of the building picking up police gossip. It was 
 safe enough for him to make these excursions,
 
 THE QUARRY 11 
 
 molelike, from underground, for escape from 
 the " Barrel " without connivance was impos- 
 sible. 
 
 In the tight little police prison the only sound 
 that reached the prisoners was the faint, soft 
 shuffling of feet that somehow managed to work 
 its way like a wireless message through stone, 
 earth and steel from the sidewalk above. 
 
 The dragging of the myriad feet began at six 
 in the morning and at eight o'clock the shuffling 
 above reached its greatest volume. It died down 
 and away by nine. At noon the occupants of 
 the " Barrel " heard it swing into full force 
 suddenly and continue until one o'clock. At 
 five in the evening it began again, and at six 
 swelled higher than at any time during the day, 
 as the factories, loft buildings and offices dis- 
 gorged themselves of the multitudes of workers 
 and the rush for subway, elevated and surface 
 roads began. 
 
 During the chaos which followed the destruc- 
 tion of San Francisco, one awful, sinister, fright- 
 ening sound welled above the turmoil: the steady, 
 rhythmic tramping of many tired feet. It came 
 from the heavily guarded columns of prisoners
 
 12 THE QUARRY 
 
 being herded from tottering walls to open spaces. 
 It beat on the air in toneless measure as the 
 dropping of earth into a half-filled grave. To 
 the men in the " Barrel " the sound of Manhat- 
 tan's lock-step and the occasional clank of an iron 
 door were the only breaks in the solemn stillness 
 of death in life. 
 
 It was noon when Montgomery groped about 
 his little black cell and found an iron shelf 
 hinged to one of its walls. He threw himself on a 
 dirty, twisted blanket, his body worn out and his 
 mind a blank. His stomach called for food, but 
 he dared not ask for any. The lunch hour tramp- 
 ing of feet above lulled him into oblivion. His 
 tired eyes closed and he slept. 
 
 A voice, sounding very faintly at first but 
 gathering volume until his ears ached, awakened 
 him. 
 
 " Hell, I thought you was dead," he heard the 
 turnkey say. " Here, take this." 
 
 The prisoner dropped his legs over the iron 
 pallet's edge and held out his hands. 
 
 The turnkey had brought him a large tin cup 
 filled with beef stew, and the savor of it made the 
 boy's brain reel with the delights of anticipation.
 
 THE QUARRY 13 
 
 He lifted the cup to his lips and drank from it 
 eagerly. The turnkey handed him a piece of 
 bread. He clutched it, stuck it into the stew and 
 ate of it with little grunts of animal satisfaction. 
 
 Montgomery heard the cell door slam and the 
 key turn in the lock. With the last crumb of 
 bread he wiped the cup clean of the last drop 
 of the stew, and over this morsel he lingered as a 
 child lingers over its last bit of candy. 
 
 There was no article of furniture in the cell. 
 He placed the tin cup on the floor and again 
 stretched out on the pallet. He could feel the 
 food in his stomach and warmth begin to suffuse 
 his body. As the welcome process of digestion 
 started, the starved, tired lad forgot his sorrows 
 and remembered his miseries no more in dream- 
 less and refreshing slumber. 
 
 Simple as was the food, and only too slight for a 
 famished youth, it started the blood coursing 
 healthily through his veins once more. This 
 second sleep brought back his strength, and the 
 fog that had come to his brain while he was 
 undergoing the strange hardships of identification 
 began to lift. When he wakened again he found 
 that nature, replenished with fuel, had cast off
 
 14 THE QUARRY 
 
 the dread load of despair that had settled upon 
 him. 
 
 He knew not whether it was day or night. He 
 rubbed his face briskly, taking a dry bath and 
 equalizing the surface circulation of his blood. 
 He threw out his arms and legs vigorously, re- 
 moving the kinks in his muscles. 
 
 Through the bars of the cell he saw the yellow 
 smear of light and the turnkey sitting beneath it, 
 smoking a pipe. He was debating the advisability 
 of asking the day and hour when the door of the 
 " Barrel " rattled and his keeper bestirred him- 
 self. 
 
 A man in uniform was admitted. The turn- 
 key placed his pipe in his chair and came to 
 Montgomery's cell. 
 
 " Get your hat," he ordered as he unlocked 
 the door. 
 
 Montgomery groped about for his cloth cap, 
 found it and stepped out of the cell. 
 
 " It's time for the line-up," he was informed. 
 " They want you up-stairs." 
 
 In charge of the uniformed man he made his 
 way up the winding stairway and stepped into 
 the blinding sunlight which flooded the assembly
 
 THE QUARRY 15 
 
 room of the detective bureau. The room was 
 large and wainscotted high with racks of pic- 
 tures, the old Rogues' Gallery. In the center 
 of the room was a clump of fifteen men and 
 three women. They made up the police crop of 
 the night before. Yeggmen, burglars, pickpock- 
 ets, confidence men and a black-browed Sicilian 
 bomb thrower were included in the group. The 
 women, blowsy, frowsy, and insolent, were com- 
 mon thieves. 
 
 Montgomery was put in this herd and told 
 to wait there. 
 
 A lieutenant in uniform sat at a high desk 
 behind a heavy brass rail, his gray head bowed 
 over the " blotter," a book in which the record 
 of arrests is kept. Half a dozen uniformed police- 
 men were doing duty as doormen. 
 
 After a few minutes of anxious, nerve-wearing 
 delay a door opened and on the threshold ap- 
 peared a man in the garb of a citizen. Mont- 
 gomery felt the prisoners about him turning in 
 one direction and he turned and looked. He 
 saw the man in the door. There was something 
 uncanny about his appearance and he looked more 
 closely. The man's face was covered with a
 
 16 THE QUARRY 
 
 black mask. He stepped into the room and 
 another masked man appeared on the threshold. 
 
 The prisoners in the center of the room drew 
 closer together. The second masked man entered 
 and a third took his place, to be framed spectre- 
 like and sinister in the white casing of the door. 
 
 There was a snicker of contempt from several 
 of the prisoners and a whispered and filthy 
 anathema as the plain-clothes men gradually 
 began to crowd the room. Montgomery counted 
 the first and then the second dozen and still they 
 came, silently, and showing hideous black patches 
 where human faces should have been. 
 
 A circle was formed about the little group in 
 the center of the room. The prisoners edged to- 
 gether in a rapidly tightening clump of helpless 
 humanity. The nerve of one of the women began 
 to go. She blurted out an oath at the top of her 
 voice and followed it with an hysterical laugh 
 that was half blubbering. 
 
 "There's Red Callahan!" she cried, leveling 
 her finger at one of the masked men. " There's 
 Red, the boy after the graft, the crookedest 
 bull y'ever seen in this town." 
 
 Close to Montgomery a squat, long-armed
 
 THE QUARRY 17 
 
 prisoner with prognathous jaw and sloping 
 forehead began rumbling out expletives. Ugly 
 as were the curses, it was better than silence, this 
 low, animal-like sound of protest. 
 
 All the while the eyes of the detectives flashed 
 through the masks as the light would strike them. 
 They peered steadily at the faces and forms within 
 the circle, studying their " Peculiarities of Habit 
 and Action." The hunters would know their 
 quarry again when time came to break open new 
 leads, but the quarry in flight would not know 
 the faces of the men after them. 
 
 This was the morning line-up at headquarters. 
 It was as if a number of lithe, blood-thirsting 
 ferrets had been turned into a circular pit for 
 each of eighteen rats, and the rats, being 
 without a corner into which they might crowd 
 for the final struggle for life, had run to the center 
 of the pit to perish back to back. 
 
 It was only a matter of minutes but it seemed 
 to James Montgomery, a boy fresh from the 
 countryside, that he had been in this chamber of 
 horrors so long that he had become palsied with 
 the years. 
 
 His head was swimming and his heart going
 
 18 THE QUARRY 
 
 like a trip-hammer when he was shoved into a 
 prison van with the others and taken to the 
 Jefferson Market police court in the lower West 
 Side to be arraigned. 
 
 As dismal as was the interior of the ill-lighted 
 court-room, the first glimpse of the black-robed 
 magistrate brought a feeling of relief to Mont- 
 gomery. He was in a court of justice, an in- 
 stitution designed for people in the very plight 
 in which he found himself. The innocent would 
 here find protection and the guilty would re- 
 ceive punishment. The courts were as much for 
 the people as for the police, he thought. 
 
 As the line of prisoners edged along in front 
 of the magistrate's desk, he began to frame the 
 words he would say in his own behalf. Surely 
 he would be given a chance to declare his in- 
 nocence. 
 
 At last it came his turn. He stepped upon the 
 little elevation, known as the " bridge," and 
 looked over the edge of the magistrate's desk. 
 The magistrate did not look at the prisoner but 
 gave all his attention to a document placed be- 
 fore him by a clerk at his right hand. He signed 
 it and gave it to Detective Kearney, who held
 
 THE QUARRY 19 
 
 fast to the sleeve of the accused. The policeman 
 on duty at the bridge pulled back the prisoner 
 and Kearney started off through the crowd with 
 him. In his right hand the detective held the 
 document committing Montgomery to the Tombs 
 to await an investigation of the charge against 
 him and an indictment by the grand jury. 
 
 Within a half-hour from the time he stepped 
 up on the bridge, with his protest of innocence 
 ready on his lips, James Montgomery was in a 
 cell in Murderers' Row in the Tombs.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MICHAEL KEARNEY was one of the star 
 plain-clothes men of New York. He had 
 little imagination and the psychological 
 theories of Miinsterberg and Lombroso did not 
 interest him. He had heard that there were 
 such writers on criminology but he had never 
 read anything they had written, and if he had 
 tried to read their works he would not have been 
 able to comprehend them because of their scholar- 
 liness. His life was given to dealing with the 
 raw stuff, the actual criminal and the actual 
 crime. He never shaped a theory; the district 
 attorney and his assistants could indulge in that 
 after he had turned in the evidence. 
 
 Kearney " went on the cops," as the depart- 
 ment slang has it, when he was twenty-three years 
 old. He had done two years' work at the polls 
 in his election precinct and his father before him 
 had been a Tammany man. He was among the 
 humble but nevertheless efficient and necessary
 
 THE QUARRY 21 
 
 toilers in the great political machine which for 
 so many years has controlled the government of 
 New York. His appointment to the force was 
 his reward for political chores done in a manner 
 satisfactory to his precinct captain and the as- 
 sembly district leader. 
 
 In the police school Kearney was taught how to 
 heel a crook, how to strangle an assailant, how 
 to suddenly shoot upward the heavy base of his 
 big right hand to the chin of a foe from the under- 
 world and shock his brain with the jolt, how to 
 twist an arm so that agony would subdue an 
 obstreperous prisoner, and how to pick up from the 
 street and heave to his shoulders a corpse twice 
 his own weight. These essentials he worked out 
 with dogged application and terrific sweat on the 
 wrestling mats in the training room. 
 
 Kearney was taught how to swing the butt of 
 a revolver, keeping the right index finger inside 
 of the guard so that with a twist the weapon 
 could be turned instantly into position for firing. 
 His instructors transmitted to him every trick in 
 brutal contest with the same care that the mother 
 of pit dogs teaches her whelps the holds for limb 
 and throat.
 
 22 THE QUARRY 
 
 After this kindergarten training, Kearney went 
 to the identification school, where he was taught 
 the art of keeping a fellow human branded with 
 his guilt until the day of his death. At a little 
 desk of the same style of construction that is used 
 in the public schools, he sat for days, listening 
 keenly to lectures and watching his instructor draw 
 on the blackboard human profiles and sketches of 
 ears and noses. Here he developed the power of 
 observation and also strengthened his memory. 
 
 Having learned to " spot," or pick out, a 
 criminal, Kearney was sent to the streets with a 
 senior in point of service who taught him to 
 " shadow." Identification, pursuit, detection and 
 prosecution were acquired by hard work and 
 conscientious attention to the tasks put before 
 him. He became a man with a camera eye and 
 one with but a single joy in life the chase! 
 
 As Kearney advanced in his profession, he 
 became known as a detective who never stopped 
 on a trail until he had caught up with the quarry. 
 After five years he was made a first grade lieu- 
 tenant at headquarters; he had become a silent, 
 almost sullen, man, looked up to by those under 
 him and feared by those over him, who drew
 
 THE QUARRY 23 
 
 larger salaries but who had less capacity as man- 
 hunters. 
 
 If any of the sense of humor had come to him 
 with his Irish blood, Kearney lost it in early 
 youth with other boyish pleasures. The bright, 
 laughing side of life was not for him. There is 
 plenty of strong jest and grim comedy in the 
 underworld, but there was no fun in Mike Kearney 
 and consequently he did not appreciate any grade 
 or quality of mirth. 
 
 But Kearney had one pleasure in life, and it 
 was so satisfying to him that his homely, clean- 
 shaven face would break into a smile at the 
 mere thought of it. This pleasure was his home. 
 It was not the home of the average man of thirty 
 years, with a contented wife and growing chil- 
 dren, but it was good enough for Kearney, for 
 his old mother kept it spotlessly clean and snug 
 for him, and therein she worshiped her only 
 son. In a comfortable little flat in the lower 
 East Side mother and son lived. She was all 
 the world to him and he was the apple of her eye. 
 
 The day before the trial of James Montgomery 
 for murder, Kearney started home after a long 
 conference with a young assistant district attor-
 
 24 THE QUARRY 
 
 ney who had been given the case for prosecution. 
 They had gone over the evidence together care- 
 fully and both had agreed, with considerable 
 satisfaction, that the jury would surely bring 
 in a verdict of murder in the second degree if it 
 failed to bring in a first degree verdict entailing 
 death in the chair. 
 
 Counsel had been appointed by a justice in the 
 Criminal Division of the Supreme Court, as 
 Montgomery was friendless and penniless. An 
 effort had been made to have this lawyer plead 
 guilty to manslaughter for the defendant. The 
 docket was heavy and time and expense would 
 be saved. For thus helping out the county, 
 Montgomery would be repaid with a sentence 
 of fifteen or twenty years. But the boy's counsel 
 reported that his client insisted on his innocence 
 and refused to plead guilty to any degree of crime. 
 
 Mike Kearney was satisfied. His evidence 
 was all in shape. He left the cracked, dirty, 
 Criminal Courts building on Centre Street and 
 threaded his way into the lower East Side. On 
 Oliver Street, close to the old Cherry Hill section, 
 he came to a three-story brick building that had 
 been a fine residence in the days when Canal
 
 THE QUARRY 25 
 
 Street was the city's northern boundary. It 
 had been made over into flats and his home was 
 on the top floor. As he approached the house, he 
 saw the gray head of his mother at a front window, 
 where she was watching and waiting for him. 
 He shouted up to ask whether she wanted him 
 to run any errand before dinner. She shook her 
 head and withdrew it as he entered the vestibule 
 ef the old-fashioned house. 
 
 At the head of the top flight of stairs his mother 
 stood waiting for him. She kissed him and with 
 a hand on his arm escorted him into the kitchen 
 of the flat. She pulled a chair up to the kitchen 
 table and hung up his hat and coat. 
 
 The room was spotless and had a wholesome, 
 homely aspect. On the brightly polished range 
 a kettle was singing. The floor was bare, save for 
 an oilcloth mat before the stove, but the boards 
 were as white as if they had been rubbed with 
 pumice after much soaping and scrubbing. From 
 the edge of a long shelf swung long-handled spoons 
 and forks, pots and pans, and other implements 
 essential to the happiness of a home-loving and 
 industrious woman. 
 
 The only picture on the kitchen walls and
 
 26 THE QUARRY 
 
 the kitchen was also the dining-room for mother 
 and son was that of the Saviour. His benign 
 countenance looked with a tender and com- 
 passionate smile upon the rather portly, bustling 
 old mother and the son who loved her and only 
 her of all the people of the world. 
 
 At the two open windows a gentle breeze of 
 the autumn evening made crispy, scrim curtains 
 rise, flutter and fall. Kearney tilted his chair 
 back against the wall and sighed his content 
 as he sat in his shirt sleeves and glanced about 
 the room. He had as yet said nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Kearney went to a window opening on 
 the fire-escape and reached into a box. 
 
 " I have a surprise f'r me darlin' boy," she 
 said, hiding something behind her ample apron 
 and smiling with love and pride upon her son. 
 
 He smiled back to her with an inquiring arch of 
 his sandy eyebrows. 
 
 " I'm getting ixtravagant in me old age, Mike," 
 she told him, with a little laugh of content and 
 happiness. " But as me boy is a first grade 
 lieutenant and will soon be after getting in the 
 grade of captain, I thought I would order this." 
 
 She held up a brown bottle of beer of better
 
 THE QUARRY 27 
 
 quality than they had been accustomed to afford 
 in past years. 
 
 " I tried it mesilf, Mike," she went on. " It 
 was after I'd finished the washin' an' it was 
 grand. Shall I open it f'r ye? " 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " Ye're that solemn, Mike," she protested, as 
 she removed the tin top from the bottle, " that 
 ye'd give a good fairy th' blues. What's ailin' 
 ye, lad?" 
 
 " Nuthin," he replied, as he took the bottle 
 and swigged it from the neck. Getting his 
 breath after a deep potation, he added: " I gotta 
 case on to-morrow and I don't want to make a 
 slip-up." 
 
 " A big case? " she asked. 
 
 " No, but it's murder." 
 
 " Murder! " she echoed, with awe in her voice. 
 
 " The Montgomery case I told ye about." 
 
 " O, an' he's only a broth of a boy! " 
 
 " Crooks start young." 
 
 He returned to his beer as she spread a clean 
 cloth and placed knives, forks and plates for 
 two on the table. 
 
 The dusk came and the deep shadow of a tene-
 
 28 THE QUARRY 
 
 ment in the rear of the little, old-fashioned house 
 crept to the scrim curtains and darkened them. 
 Kearney closed the windows and lighted the gas- 
 jet over the center of the room. 
 
 The mother placed bread and butter, boiled 
 beef, potatoes and cabbage on the table and they 
 sat down for their evening meal. Mrs. Kearney 
 made the sign of the cross. And her son, from 
 long habit, bowed his head and touched his 
 breast in three places. 
 
 They were eating in silence when the electric 
 bell beside the kitchen door tingled feebly. 
 
 " Who's that, I wonder? " asked Kearney, 
 reaching behind him and pressing the button 
 which would open the street entrance. They had 
 resumed their meal when there came a light tap 
 at the door. 
 
 " Come in," called Mrs. Kearney. 
 
 The door opened. The light overhead flooded 
 the frail figure of a woman in black. She was 
 old and a little bit of a creature, with the frame 
 of a mere child. Her clothes were of poor quality 
 but were wonderfully neat and tidy. She wore 
 an old-fashioned bonnet trimmed with stiff, 
 white ruching. Her hands were ungloved and they
 
 " What can I do for you, ma'am? " asked Kearney, half 
 turning from his plate. Page 29.
 
 THE QUARRY 29 
 
 showed small and thin and heavily veined. Her 
 face was very pale and in her faded eyes was a 
 light of dreadful anxiety. 
 
 " Does Mr. Kearney live here? " she asked 
 very softly. 
 
 " Yes; I'm Kearney," replied the detective. 
 
 " Come in, ma'am, won't ye, and have a seat? " 
 asked Mrs. Kearney, leaving her chair and going 
 to the visitor. 
 
 The little old woman entered and sat on the 
 edge of a chair offered her. 
 
 "What can I do for you, ma'am?" asked 
 Kearney, half turning from his plate. 
 
 " You can do everything for me, sir," she 
 replied, with a quaver in the sound of every word. 
 " I've come for my boy Jim Jim Montgomery. 
 He's in trouble. I just heard of it through the 
 papers." 
 
 A wave of pity flooded the heart of Mrs. Kear- 
 ney as she looked from the pathetic little mother to 
 her big-boned, stolid son. 
 
 Kearney's jaw dropped and the knife and fork 
 fell from his hands. He turned cautiously and 
 took a sly look at the face of the mother of his 
 quarry. He saw that she was a woman of refine-
 
 30 THE QUARRY 
 
 ment and not of the vigorous, assertive, inde- 
 pendent, motherly type of the East Side. Her 
 dress and her comportment told him that she had 
 come from the country. 
 
 " I would have been here sooner," she explained, 
 " but I live on the other side of the Hudson, you 
 see, near Nyack, and I did not know what had 
 happened. I thought my Jim was hunting a 
 job in the city, and when I did not hear from him 
 I went into the village to ask the advice of some 
 of the friends of my husband, who is dead 
 these many years. I then heard of my boy's 
 arrest." 
 
 A little spray of jet beads topping her bonnet 
 trembled violently and flashed in the light of the 
 gas above. After a moment she regained control 
 of her emotions. 
 
 " Why didn't yuh go to see his lawyer? " 
 asked Kearney. 
 
 " I went to the Tombs prison," she told him, 
 " and they said that it was too late for me to see 
 my son. They did not know the name of his 
 lawyer but one of the keepers felt sorry for me 
 and told me that you knew all about the case. He 
 got your address for me."
 
 THE QUARRY 31 
 
 Kearney cursed the prison deputy for a fool as 
 he pondered what to say next. 
 
 " You ain't got any right to be here on this 
 case," he said finally and with irritation in his 
 voice. " And I ain't got any right to be talking 
 with you about it. I'm a witness for the prose- 
 cution. You must wait and see your son's 
 lawyer in the morning." 
 
 Mrs. Kearney began clearing away the dishes. 
 
 " He's innocent, sir," the frail visitor pleaded 
 eagerly. " He has been my support since he was 
 a boy of fourteen and a better son no woman ever 
 had. He knows nothing about crime, Mr. Kear- 
 ney. He's just a country boy. His father was a 
 good man before him, and I brought him up in 
 the fear of God. You've got a good mother, sir, 
 and you c-c-c-an " 
 
 Her voice trailed off to nothingness. The tears 
 came silently from the faded, anxious eyes and 
 the heavily-veined little hands hid the white 
 face. 
 
 " What can I do, ma'am? " demanded Kearney 
 sharply. " I'm the chief witness for the prosecu- 
 tion. I gotta do my duty, hard as it may be. The 
 law tells me what I gotta do and I must do it.
 
 32 THE QUARRY 
 
 If you got witnesses, bring 'em to court in the 
 morning." 
 
 " I have several friends in Nyack who will 
 testify that my boy is a good boy," she sobbed. 
 " They promised to come to the court-house 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Kearney looked at his watch, pushed back his 
 chair, and reached for his hat and coat. 
 
 " That's all I can tell you, lady," he said, as 
 he departed abruptly. 
 
 Mrs. Montgomery called after him in a thin, 
 frightened voice, but if he heard he did not reply. 
 
 She started up from her chair to leave, but 
 her strength gave out and she sank back, sobbing 
 bitterly. 
 
 Kearney's mother brought her a cup of tea and 
 solaced her as best she could, the tears flowing 
 from her own eyes.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 EUGENE GARRETT, a lawyer of insignifi- 
 cant attainment at the bar but with a 
 certain degree of political influence in his 
 assembly district, was the man chosen by the court 
 to defend Montgomery. The fee he would receive 
 from the public treasury was a part of his reward 
 for his practical Democratic industry in and out 
 of season. 
 
 He was by no means a trial lawyer, but he had 
 attained success so far as the gathering of money 
 counts for success in life. His ruddy, heavy 
 features always bore a smile, the corners of his 
 lips having become fixed from constantly as- 
 sumed geniality. His gait was of affected im- 
 portance and his attire was worn about a huge 
 blue-white diamond rivetted in the center of a 
 striped shirt. 
 
 Garrett welcomed the arrival of the mother 
 of his client and with the voice of a dove as- 
 sured the frightened little countrywoman that he
 
 34 THE QUARRY 
 
 would move heaven and earth to free her son. 
 He inquired very gently as to her probability 
 of securing funds for taking the case to the higher 
 courts on appeal, should a verdict against him 
 be reached by the jury. 
 
 Aside from the prospect of getting a fee from 
 her as well as from the court, the lawyer took 
 a genuine professional interest in the mother of 
 the defendant. He would use her to work on the 
 sympathies of the jury. She brought to the 
 Criminal Courts building three men and a woman, 
 old friends from the country about the town of 
 Nyack. All would be willing character witnesses 
 for the accused. 
 
 They entered the court room with the assist- 
 ant district attorney, his witnesses and a flock 
 of men drawn as veniremen. They were hardly 
 seated when the door of the chambers of the 
 presiding justice was opened by a court attend- 
 ant and a heavy, drowsy man in a black silk 
 gown strode across the room and made his way 
 laboriously and with much panting to the dais 
 before a mural painting of Justice, flanked by 
 another of the three Fates. Every one in the 
 court-room rose from his seat and remained
 
 THE QUARRY 35 
 
 standing until the justice was seated. The jus- 
 tice arranged the folds of his gown, took his seat, 
 and stared with deep reflection at a sheet of 
 perfectly blank paper before him, occasionally 
 heightening his pose of dignity and importance 
 by making curlicues on the paper with pen and ink. 
 
 A jury was quickly secured from the panel, and 
 twelve men who had declared that they were not 
 opposed to capital punishment, that they had 
 not rea"d the newspapers, that they had no opin- 
 ions whatever and were perfectly competent to 
 give Montgomery a fair trial and order his life 
 snufFed out, took their seats in the jury-box. 
 
 Had Garrett possessed the astuteness and the 
 eloquence of a Bourke Cockran or a Jerome, he 
 might have hoped to interest the little group of 
 listless and shabby men in the jury-box. But 
 juries on criminal cases in New York are chosen 
 from the city's ample supply of mediocrity, and 
 in consequence suffer a sense of affliction when 
 they behold it in others. Brilliancy, though it 
 may only flash in the pan, stirs their sluggish 
 minds, and the reward for the brilliant is rapt 
 attention, knowing and appreciative smiles and 
 favorable verdicts.
 
 36 THE QUARRY 
 
 Then, too, juries on New York's criminal cases, 
 for the most part, have long grown accustomed 
 to the guidance of the press. Although they 
 may not read the newspapers and may be sincere 
 in declaring that if they have read them they 
 have not formed an opinion that would prevent 
 their giving a fair trial, they learn in some strange 
 manner that the papers are lifting them from 
 obscurity by printing their pictures and their 
 names, and they revel in the importance of their 
 well advertised performance of civic duty. 
 
 The annals of New York's courts are packed 
 with cases where hysterical editorials, articles 
 of " human interest " by special men and women 
 writers, forcing sympathy for murderers and mur- 
 deresses, have brought about acquittals. It is 
 a proud and eventful moment in the life of a 
 New York juror when the shriek from the press 
 is answered by his verdict of " Not Guilty " 
 and the acquitted prisoner rushes to the jury- 
 box to wring his flaccid hand. 
 
 But in the case of the People or the Police 
 against James Montgomery there was no outcry 
 for mercy. There was not enough of sordidness 
 in the crime to give the public a real thrill. He
 
 THE QUARRY 37 
 
 was not of the real murderer's type, the kind that 
 slays for selfishness or hate. He was not a minis- 
 ter of the gospel nor was he the dissolute son of 
 a Pittsburgh millionaire. His case was devoid 
 of all the elements that make murder fascinating 
 to those newspaper readers who take murder-trial 
 reports as a part of their intellectual pabulum. 
 
 The watchman of the bank in the West Side 
 had been cracked over the head with an iron 
 instrument. His end was as prosaic as had been 
 his birth and life. 
 
 There was no crowd in the court-room as 
 Garrett rose and announced that the defense was 
 ready for trial. 
 
 Montgomery sat with his mother on his left 
 and his counsel on his right. The little band 
 of plain people who had journeyed from the 
 country to help the widow's son sat on the 
 first bench behind the railing which marked off 
 the space for counsel and clients. 
 
 The young assistant district attorney was 
 flanked on the right by Kearney, who was there 
 to see that the club of the police system descended 
 fairly and squarely and with every pound and 
 ounce of force the written law allowed.
 
 38 THE QUARRY 
 
 The policeman who had caught the prisoner 
 running away from the scene of the murder with 
 a kit of tools sat on the left of the prosecuting 
 attorney. Three other witnesses sat near them. 
 They were to testify that on the night of the murder 
 they had seen the prisoner lurking in the Hell's 
 Kitchen section of the city on the North River 
 front. One of these was a stool pigeon of long 
 service to the detective bureau, a man hired to 
 betray fellow criminals and one whose own crimes 
 were overlooked because of his usefulness. 
 
 There was one other witness, a man who com- 
 bined a knowledge of bacteriology and chemistry 
 with a knowledge of the science developed by 
 Bertillon anthropometry. Garrett looked at 
 him curiously and wondered what part he would 
 play in the case. The police had not produced 
 this witness until the trial was begun. It was 
 an old police trick, as old as the trick played by 
 Daniel when he cleared Susanna and inaugurated 
 the practice of separating witnesses. 
 
 The indictment charging murder was read and 
 the prisoner pleaded not guilty. 
 
 Where it required three months to bring about 
 a mistrial for the murderous young millionaire
 
 THE QUARRY 39 
 
 from Pittsburgh in this same vilely kept building, 
 with its horde of idling political appointees, it 
 required only three hours to dispose of the case 
 of this pale country boy facing a hurried and im- 
 patient judge and a sleepy jury. 
 
 In those three hours Kearney, the man from 
 headquarters, had his witnesses present the case 
 for the State. The three men from Hell's 
 Kitchen told of seeing the prisoner lurking in that 
 neighborhood. He was in the company of two 
 yeggmen. The policeman who arrested him told 
 of his attempted escape after the vault of the 
 bank was blown with nitroglycerine. 
 
 Garrett then learned why the expert was brought 
 into the case. 
 
 The expert qualified as such in a brief direct 
 examination. He identified a heavy, iron 
 wrench handed him by the prosecutor as one of 
 the tools found in the kit taken from the 
 prisoner. 
 
 " You made a careful examination of this 
 implement, did you not? " asked the assistant 
 district attorney. 
 
 " I did." 
 
 " Tell the jury what you found there."
 
 40 THE QUARRY 
 
 " I found a spot about two inches long by a 
 half inch wide and by laboratory tests found it 
 to be a spot of human blood." 
 
 "What else did you find?" 
 
 " I dusted the wrench with a white powder and 
 found the prints of a thumb and two fingers." 
 
 The prosecuting attorney placed the wrench 
 in evidence as Exhibit A and then offered as 
 Exhibit B an enlarged photograph of the prints 
 found upon it. 
 
 " I offer you for identification this document, 
 which is the Bertillon record of the accused 
 taken at police headquarters following his arrest," 
 said the prosecutor. 
 
 The expert examined it. 
 
 " What do you find in this record that bears 
 upon the case before us?" 
 
 " The thumb print and the prints of the index 
 and middle fingers of the right hand in this record 
 are the same prints shown upon the wrench with 
 the spot of blood." 
 
 " That is all," said the prosecutor, with a smile 
 and an air of triumph. 
 
 He was young and eager for a record of con- 
 victions. He looked significantly toward the
 
 THE QUARRY 41 
 
 jurors as if to say: " It is now up to you, gentle- 
 men, to send the prisoner to the chair." 
 
 This trump card of the police brought to 
 James Montgomery a realization of the utter 
 hopelessness of his plight, and his face became 
 a chalky white. Death in the electric chair was 
 before him. He was but a boy and his patient, 
 old mother was sitting beside him, her hand clasp- 
 ing his. 
 
 Fortunately she could not comprehend what 
 was going on. She had never heard of the Ber- 
 tillon system. She had no realization of the 
 fact that the police had proved in court that there 
 were indisputable marks of her boy's hand upon 
 the weapon which had felled the bank watchman. 
 A childlike faith in God and a whole and perfect 
 trust in Him held her up during the ordeal. 
 
 Montgomery choked back the sobs of despair 
 that kept rising in his throat and returned the 
 pressure of his mother's hand. 
 
 The witnesses for the defense were put on in 
 quick order. They told in homely language what 
 they knew of the accused. He had been a faith- 
 ful son and the support of his mother. He was 
 working as an apprentice machinist in a factory
 
 42 THE QUARRY 
 
 in Nyack when hard times caused the factory, to 
 close. Work was scarce and he had left home to 
 seek employment in the city. 
 
 The mother took the stand. She turned in 
 the chair and looked to the judge appealingly, 
 as a wounded bird would look up to the bough 
 from which it had fallen. 
 
 " Face the jury," the judge instructed her. 
 
 She looked at the twelve men to her left and 
 beheld them staring at her as blankly as if she 
 had been a piece of misplaced furniture. 
 
 " Just tell the jury about yourboy,"said Garrett, 
 standing and twirling a heavy gold watch-charm. 
 
 " My son was born in the cottage in which I 
 now live near Nyack " she began. 
 
 ' You must speak louder," the judge instructed. 
 
 " I can't hear a word she says," testily ex- 
 claimed the prosecutor, " and I doubt if Juror 
 Number 12 can even hear the sound of her voice." 
 
 She started again but her voice was very faint, 
 and Juror Number 12 shook his head to signify 
 that he could not hear. 
 
 " Raise your voice and face the jury," said 
 the court; " don't turn toward me." 
 
 Garrett asked that she be given a glass of
 
 THE QUARRY 43 
 
 water and a court attendant hurriedly supplied 
 it. 
 
 She finally raised her voice and told her story. 
 The mother-love sung in every word she uttered; 
 it glistened with the soft light of holy candles in 
 her faded eyes, and it fairly trembled forth from 
 her fragile body as she told of the life of her only 
 child and of their mutual struggle. 
 
 " It is not in the nature of my son to harm any 
 one," she started to say, as her story drew to a 
 close. The young prosecutor popped from his 
 chair as if a powerful spring had been released 
 beneath him. 
 
 " I object," he cried wrathfully. " I ask the 
 court to have that remark stricken out as irrele- 
 vant, incompetent and immaterial. It is not 
 evidence." 
 
 " Strike it out, Mr. Stenographer," said the 
 court, with a yawn. 
 
 " No mother ever had a nobler or better son," 
 resumed the witness, the little spray of jet in her 
 bonnet trembling violently. " I know that he is 
 innocent, as innocent as I am of this " 
 
 The prosecutor was again on his feet and fairly 
 shrieking his wrath and indignation. His sense
 
 44 THE QUARRY 
 
 of justice and fairness was bitterly outraged. 
 The rules of evidence formulated in every court 
 in the land prohibited expressions of mere opin- 
 ion by a witness unless the witness had qualified 
 as an expert. 
 
 When he recovered sufficient composure to speak 
 with coherence, he asked the court to instruct 
 the jury to disregard the comments of the wit- 
 ness and to warn her against repetition of the 
 offense. 
 
 " Gentlemen of the jury," said the court, after 
 rapping with his gavel, " you are instructed to 
 pay no attention to the remarks just made by the 
 witness. They are not in the nature of evidence 
 and they are ordered stricken from the records." 
 
 Mrs. Montgomery, during this colloquy, sat 
 twisting her fingers together and looking from 
 judge to jury and from jury to judge as if in the 
 hope that some one would direct her and help 
 her. 
 
 Being only the mother of the prisoner, her 
 frail body having brought him into the world, her 
 opinion of him had no value in court. There was 
 no place in the trial for an account of maternal 
 trust and love. Garrett took her from the stand,
 
 THE QUARRY 45 
 
 the prosecuting attorney declining, with an air 
 of scorn, to cross-examine her. 
 
 The prisoner was then sworn. He had spent 
 nearly a month in the Tombs, waiting trial, and 
 the prison pallor, the ghastly yellow tinge that 
 would make a saint look like a convict, was upon 
 him. The spectacle of his little mother on the 
 stand had shaken his nerve, and his hand trem- 
 bled as he took the Bible and made his oath. 
 
 Montgomery stammered his story, often re- 
 peated himself, made mistakes and corrected 
 them. He was hopelessly rattled. Several of 
 the jurors smiled knowingly as if accepting him 
 as a poor liar. His story was simple enough 
 despite the havoc wrought with it. 
 
 When the factory closed, he left Nyack and 
 came to New York, bringing his kit of tools with 
 him. He had never heard of the Hell's Kitchen 
 section and was asking work along Tenth and 
 Eleventh Avenues because factories were lo- 
 cated there. He met a man who seemed to take 
 an interest in him. This man introduced him to 
 another and they bought him his supper at a 
 restaurant near the river. They told him that 
 they could get him work but he would have to
 
 46 THE QUARRY 
 
 work at night. They looked over his kit of tools 
 and one of them admired a steel drill and said 
 it was a fine one. 
 
 " After nightfall," Montgomery told the jury, 
 " I went with the men a number of blocks east. 
 One of them took my tools and bade me wait 
 at a corner. I was beginning to suspect that 
 something was wrong when I heard a dull ex- 
 plosion as if in a cellar. A minute after, one of 
 the men passed me, running. He dropped the 
 kit of tools and the wrench. My tools were all 
 that stood between me and starvation. If they 
 were lost I could not hope to get work at my trade. 
 I grabbed up the wrench, threw it into the bag, 
 and started to run away when I was arrested." 
 
 The cross-examination furnished the young 
 prosecutor with excellent practice in those soph- 
 istries supposed to be necessary in the practice 
 of law. The boy was as wax in the hands of the 
 questioner before him. He tried to answer adroit 
 questions he should not have answered, and his 
 failure to answer satisfactorily deepened the im- 
 pression that he was lying. After an hour of 
 misery and bewilderment he was excused from 
 the stand.
 
 THE QUARRY 47 
 
 It was noon. At one o'clock court would re- 
 cess for lunch. With a little expedition the case 
 of the Police against James Montgomery could 
 be ended in time to leave the afternoon clear. 
 The court and counsel conferred in whispers. 
 The arguments followed. They were brief. While 
 the rules of evidence would not permit the mother 
 of the prisoner to beg for his life and proclaim her 
 belief in his innocence, they allowed the pros- 
 ecutor in his address to the jury to paint him as 
 a desperate young thief, crouching in the dark 
 with a heavy iron wrench uplifted and quick to 
 do murder for the sake of loot. He had full 
 permission to paint him as Gog and Magog, as 
 Baal, as any creature to be regarded with fear 
 and revulsion. 
 
 The young man with a reputation to make was 
 forensically inclined. He shouted, waved his 
 arms, splashed on the black paint and sat down 
 with a glow within as he told himself that he had 
 done very nicely. 
 
 Garrett's address was short and weak. His 
 vocabulary was that of the money-hungry law- 
 yer who sits in a hole in the great city, shuffling 
 bonds and mortgages through his fingers and
 
 48 THE QUARRY 
 
 always nibbling away at the little hoardings of 
 ignorant clients. His sense of humanity and 
 his appreciation of the pity and horror of the 
 whole drama in which he was participating were 
 nil. 
 
 The judge's instructions to the jury were a 
 string of empty words, mouthed hurriedly and 
 tonelessly. 
 
 As the hands on the marble-faced clock in the 
 court-room showed the hour of one, the jury 
 was sent out to lunch with instructions to deliber- 
 ate on a verdict immediately after the meal. 
 The court system gave the jurors a full day's pay 
 and the price of the lunch. They were satisfied. 
 They would have full stomachs, full fee and a 
 free afternoon. 
 
 At two o'clock the twelve men, with twelve 
 toothpicks conspicuously displayed, filed into 
 the jury room and took one ballot only to decide 
 the fate of the prisoner. 
 
 The case was entirely circumstantial. There 
 was one way to avoid the risk of sending an in- 
 nocent man to his death in the electric chair. 
 They took it. 
 
 In court once more, the clerk ordered the
 
 THE QUARRY 49 
 
 prisoner to stand and face the jury and the jury 
 to look upon the prisoner. 
 
 " Gentlemen, have you reached a verdict? " 
 asked the clerk. 
 
 " We have," replied the foreman. 
 
 " What is your verdict? " 
 
 The foreman pulled a slip of paper from his 
 pocket and read : 
 
 " We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of 
 murder in the second degree."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE country people who had journeyed to 
 the metropolis to do what little they could 
 for the widow's son took Mrs. Montgomery 
 back with them. What little brightness of hope 
 had been within her during the trial of her boy 
 vanished with his conviction. 
 
 She had tried, the day after the trial, to reach 
 the judge and appeal to him for mercy and a 
 light sentence, but the importunings of widows, 
 wives and children are avoided by the judiciary 
 as much as possible. The legal representative of a 
 great banking institution or some mighty estate 
 or corporation has the open sesame to the chambers 
 of the men wearing the ermine, but there is not 
 such a great number of these and the poor are 
 a mighty multitude. 
 
 The meek and the humble are referred to the 
 written and legally canonical opinions of Mr. 
 Justice Brown, Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice 
 Green. There is but little if any room in a court
 
 THE QUARRY 51 
 
 of justice for the old belief taught by the prophets 
 and by the Young Man out of Nazareth, that 
 the mercy of God endures forever. Penalties 
 are explicit. The judge must sentence because 
 the makers of the statutes have decided that 
 such and such is a crime, and that such and such 
 is the penalty for the crime, and these makers of 
 law are legislators, the bribery and exposure of 
 whom are every-day occurrences. 
 
 At every turn the mother of James Mont- 
 gomery met with an obstacle. She had no " Big 
 Mike " This or " Little Mike " That, with political 
 power enough to make a judge tremble, back of 
 her. The judge before whom her son was con- 
 victed was hedged about by retainers, coarse, 
 blue-nosed, officious clerks, bailiffs and other 
 attaches appointed to well-paying jobs from 
 various assembly districts. 
 
 She had no money with which to allay the 
 itching of the palms of petty grafters who would 
 sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair 
 of shoes, as they have been doing since Isaiah's 
 time. To such guardians of the privacy and the 
 sanctity of the administrators of the law, Mrs. 
 Montgomery was but one of many annoying
 
 52 THE QUARRY 
 
 people trying to influence the court with her 
 tears and her sorrows. 
 
 At last she turned away and suffered herself 
 to be taken back to the little cottage out in the 
 country. A month before she had been a sprightly 
 old lady, quick of step, delighted with every house- 
 hold task, and always rinding her reward in the 
 pride that a mother takes in a good son. But 
 in the city she had found the waters of Marah and 
 the city's system had forced her down, down, 
 down to drink of them. 
 
 Her little, old limbs became heavy, her tiny 
 face whiter than the untouched scroll of Judg- 
 ment before sin and sorrow had ever come under 
 heaven, and her heart, her good, gentle, tender, 
 compassionate heart, was turned to lead. 
 
 A week after her departure her son was taken 
 from his cell in the Tombs and over the Bridge 
 of Sighs to the Criminal Courts building to be 
 sentenced. 
 
 The boy stood up when the clerk bade him. He 
 heard the question asked whether there was any 
 reason why the penalty of the law should not be 
 exacted from him. He could think of nothing to 
 say save: " I am innocent."
 
 THE QUARRY 53 
 
 The formula of sentence was mumbled by the 
 judge and an officer took him by the arm and led 
 him away. 
 
 As they reached the bridge over Franklin Street, 
 connecting the Tombs and the court building, 
 and the sunlight from the square windows struck 
 upon them for a moment, Montgomery asked his 
 keeper: 
 
 "How many years did he say? I could not 
 hear him." 
 
 The officer looked at him uneasily and hesi- 
 tated. 
 
 " Is it against the rules to tell me?" asked the 
 boy. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " What was the sentence? " 
 
 " Life imprisonment." 
 
 Montgomery staggered and the officer re- 
 leased his grip and caught him under the arms, 
 thinking that he would faint. 
 
 There was a sob, hard and bitter, and then the 
 young man cried as a child would cry when an 
 ugly tempered servant took from the nursery 
 floor its toys newly given. 
 
 The sentence of the court had swept from him
 
 54 THE QUARRY 
 
 the toys of young manhood and had cast them 
 as grass into the furnace. He would never hear 
 the sound of a woman's voice, nor the sound of 
 laughter by man or child. He would never again 
 see the magic line where sky and sea or woodlands 
 meet. Even the seasons of the year were taken 
 from him. The beauties of nature familiar to the 
 eyes of a wholesome country boy, the spread of 
 smiling fields, tasseled corn waving in the wind, 
 bending roads, glimpses of the sunlit river through 
 foliage, quiet little gardens in front of quiet little 
 houses, were all taken from him as if the tail of 
 a comet loaded with cyanogen had swept the 
 earth and had wiped out all the loveliness that 
 God had fashioned for His children. 
 
 Within the walls of Sing Sing prison the chirp 
 of some brave and friendly sparrow might catch 
 his ear, perhaps, but the music of the brook and 
 the wind in the trees, the hum and thrum of in- 
 sects on autumn nights, the calls and songs of 
 robin, thrush and lark and the low, lovestrung 
 voice of his patient mother would never be his 
 again. Silence and gray walls and work until 
 death were his. 
 
 As the sentenced prisoners were being taken
 
 THE QUARRY 55 
 
 from the Tombs for the journeys to the State's 
 various prisons, Detective Lieutenant Michael 
 Kearney sat in the office of his inspector and re- 
 ceived his congratulations for his excellent work 
 in the Montgomery case. 
 
 The inspector was gratified. A life sentence 
 was better than a death sentence, for yeggmen 
 do not fear death and it is only the dread of 
 long prison terms that serves their profession as 
 a deterrent. In so far as the care and preserva- 
 tion of human society went, Montgomery was 
 better off buried alive than buried dead. Other 
 yeggs would think a second time before braining 
 a bank watchman or manhandling a cop. 
 
 Inspector Ranscombe looked over his list of 
 assignments for the day and found nothing worth 
 the time and skill of his favorite manhunter. 
 
 " You have a day off, Mike," he told the de- 
 tective. 
 
 Kearney did not relish this and craned his neck 
 to scan the list of assignments. 
 
 " Nothing doing," laughed his chief. " You've 
 just got to take a day off." 
 
 Kearney rose, saluted and left headquarters. 
 A man absolutely unappreciative of the ordinary
 
 56 THE QUARRY 
 
 pleasures of life, he found himself at a loss what 
 to do. He walked north to Fourteenth Street and 
 loitered in that crowded, tawdry highway between 
 Broadway and Third Avenue. He read the 
 flamboyant bills announcing the attractions of 
 cheap theatres and picture shows but he entered 
 none of them. He found the crowds outside 
 more interesting and he kept his keen, little eyes 
 on the alert for a pickpocket or some other law- 
 breaker. 
 
 He had no unfinished case on his hands. All 
 of his men were either in prison serving their 
 terms or in the Tombs waiting trial. 
 
 He thought of taking the subway to Grand 
 Central Station and ambushing a crook or two 
 in the crowds there, but second thought made 
 him decide that the plain-clothes men on duty 
 there would resent his intrusion. He abandoned 
 this rather promising process of recreation. 
 
 There was only one thing worth while after 
 all on a day off: his little flat in Oliver Street. 
 He took a Third Avenue Elevated train to Chat- 
 ham Square and made his way home. He rang 
 the bell in the vestibule. The lock clicked and he 
 entered.
 
 THE QUARRY 57 
 
 Kearney mounted the stairs and opened his 
 mother's kitchen door without knocking. 
 
 "Well, Mike!" exclaimed Mrs. Kearney in 
 surprise. " What brings you home at this time of 
 day? " 
 
 " Say, old lady," he replied warningly, " you 
 want to be careful about leaving this kitchen 
 door unlocked and answering every ring of the 
 bell. Some day a couple of daylight guys will 
 come along, tap you on the bean and clean out the 
 place. You get me? " 
 
 " The good Lord looks out f'r your mither, 
 Mike," she replied, " but ye didn' answer me 
 question, lad." 
 
 " I gotta day off," he told her. " Ye' re scrub- 
 bing the kitchen flure again. When'll you be 
 done?" 
 
 " Pretty soon, Mike. You go in the parlor and 
 make yourself comfortable and I'll bring the 
 beer and your pipe." 
 
 He did as she bade him and she followed, 
 clearing off a center table and placing his beer, 
 pipe and tobacco on it. 
 
 He tried several chairs. They were all stiffly 
 tufted bought for " company." He could
 
 58 THE QUARRY 
 
 adjust himself to none of them comfortably. 
 He drank his beer and looked about the room 
 reflectively. 
 
 Various gewgaws stuck on the mantel, the 
 heavily framed carbon portraits of his father and 
 mother, one of himself when he was a dour boy 
 of fifteen, the spindle legs of the center table and 
 the violently red roses in the carpet were not to 
 his liking. He returned to the kitchen. 
 
 " Could ye spread down some bagging so I can 
 stay in here? " he asked. 
 
 " Sure, lad," she replied from her knees. " I'm 
 finished now." 
 
 She made him comfortable in his old chair by 
 the window. He was engaged in balancing him- 
 self at his favorite angle when he noticed some- 
 thing black on the end of the kitchen table. 
 
 " What's that, old lady? " he asked curiously. 
 
 The mother's face paled. 
 
 He reached over and picked it up. It was a filmy 
 and torn veil. Beneath it was a little black fan. 
 
 " She forgot them Mrs. Montgomery," ex- 
 plained the mother, taking the two articles from 
 the hand of her son. " The poor, little woman; 
 the poor, little woman! "
 
 THE QUARRY 59 
 
 She hurried with them to her bedroom, which 
 opened on the kitchen. When she returned and 
 began shaking down the ashes in the stove, she 
 sighed. 
 
 " It's terrible, Mike," she said. " The poor, old 
 mither is left out in the world to starve or die 
 of a broken heart. Blessed Mother in Heaven 
 look after her." 
 
 Some of the cosiness of the room seemed to 
 leave it. Was there chill in the air or did he just 
 imagine it? He closed the window back of him. 
 
 " The evidence was all one way," he grunted. 
 " I didn't try him. I wasn't the judge or the 
 jury. I didn't decide whether he was guilty or 
 innocent. That ain't my job. My job is to get 
 the evidence for the prosecution. He had a 
 lawyer, didn't he? " 
 
 Anger had crept into his voice. 
 
 Mrs. Kearney, flustered, busied herself further 
 with the stove. 
 
 " All I said, Mike, was that I was sorry for the 
 poor lad's mither," she protested. " He is worse 
 than dead to her, f'r if he was dead she could 
 go to his grave of a Sunday." 
 
 He resorted to his beer bottle.
 
 60 THE QUARRY 
 
 The sun that had burst through the clouds a 
 few moments before once again disappeared and 
 the crisp scrim curtains darkened. The rain 
 began to fall and slap against the window- 
 panes. The bright fire in the stove made the 
 room warm, but Mike Kearney did not feel at 
 ease. The wind rose and began to skirl in 
 the eaves of the old-fashioned Oliver Street 
 house. 
 
 He tried to think of something to say that 
 would turn the conversation to some more agree- 
 able subject, but he was a one-idea man and 
 there was no fancy in him. 
 
 From the open door of his mother's bedroom 
 came a soft, ruffling sound. 
 
 It startled him. 
 
 " What's that? " he demanded. 
 
 " It's that divil of a kitten, Mickey," she told 
 him. 
 
 As if in answer for himself, Mrs. Kearney's 
 mouser rolled into the kitchen, slapping and 
 playing with a black object, the mourning fan 
 of Mrs. Montgomery. 
 
 Kearney left his chair and went to a closet, 
 taking down a rusty felt hat and a raincoat.
 
 THE QUARRY 61 
 
 " I think I'll walk around to th' Oak Street 
 station f'r a bit of gossip," he said. 
 
 " But I'll be gettin' lunch f'r ye pretty soon, 
 Mike," she protested. 
 
 " Naw, I guess I'll eat out f'r a change." With 
 a grunt of good-by he left the flat 
 
 Mrs. Kearney went out into the corridor and 
 listened fondly to his last footfall on the stairs. 
 When the door below slammed behind him, she 
 went to her bedroom, found a pair of silver- 
 rimmed spectacles, and sat down at a kitchen 
 window to read from her " Key of Heaven."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 OF the men sentenced with James Mont- 
 gomery, six were sent to Sing Sing, while 
 the others went to Clinton and Auburn. 
 
 The six Sing Sing men were manacled in 
 couples, but as Montgomery was a " lifer," ad- 
 ditional precaution against attempted escape 
 was taken by handcuffing him to a guard as well 
 as to his prison mate. There were three links 
 in the chain of humanity and steel. 
 
 Montgomery found that the prisoner locked 
 to his right wrist was the heavy, long-armed 
 man with the prognathous jaw who had sworn 
 so heartily and bitterly the morning of the line-up 
 at police headquarters. 
 
 The six men and their guards piled into an 
 automobile van in front of the Tombs on Centre 
 Street. Above the clanging of the gong of the 
 machine and the heavy roar of vehicular traffic 
 as they were taken toward Grand Central Station, 
 Montgomery could hear the man beside him
 
 THE QUARRY 63 
 
 keeping up a low growl, as of a beast dreaming of 
 battle. 
 
 The poor lad who had been felled by the lion's 
 paw reaching from Mulberry Street accepted these 
 mutterings as a protest against society. Terrible 
 as was his fate, he was too young and fresh to know 
 aught about ranting and cursing. But in his heart 
 he felt as if he could say " Aye " to the bitter 
 outpourings of the savage companion linked to 
 him. Had he known the length of this man's 
 sentence he might have envied him, for he was 
 to serve only fifteen years. His offense was 
 burglary. 
 
 They boarded a train for Ossining at Grand 
 Central Station. The guards turned seats in the 
 smoking-car so that they could face their prison- 
 ers. The man in charge of Montgomery slipped 
 his steel leash for the journey and sat opposite him 
 and the fifteen-year man. 
 
 At Tarrytown, where the electric zone ended, 
 the train was delayed while an engine was coupled 
 to the coaches. Here the tracks run on the very 
 edge of the Hudson, the river splashing the 'ties 
 during high winds from the west. 
 
 Across the river Montgomery could see a
 
 64 THE QUARRY 
 
 pretty cluster of houses half hidden in the trees. 
 It was the village of Nyack. Just over the sky- 
 line and beyond the last peaked roof, was a 
 cottage standing back from the broad automobile 
 road which leads to Tuxedo. Within that cottage 
 was the little mother with the faded eyes and the 
 heart that had turned to lead in the Criminal 
 Courts building in New York. His eyes peered 
 hungrily through the coach window. He had 
 written to her from the Tombs. It was a brave 
 letter of determination to some day prove to the 
 world that he was innocent of the crime of 
 which he had been convicted. He advised her 
 to cast about for a boarder, so that she could 
 keep the taxes paid on the home. His father had 
 been a Mason in good standing and the Masons 
 had helped her before. They would help their 
 dead brother's widow again, he told her. As he 
 gazed toward the pleasant, distant country 
 where his mother lived, he thought over this 
 letter and prayed that some word in it might 
 give her courage to fight through her natural 
 span of life. The cursing of the burglar beside 
 him died down and was finally replaced by 
 heavy breathing which told that he slumbered.
 
 THE QUARRY 65 
 
 The coaches clacked together and shivered as 
 the locomotive coupled up. 
 
 The boy pressed his forehead against the 
 window-pane and feasted his eyes for the last 
 time on the heavily wooded further shore, the 
 hill-bent horizon, the masses of clouds and patches 
 of blue heaven, the rippling expanse of water, 
 silver-crested by a stiff breeze from the south- 
 west, the faint red tops of cottage chimneys and 
 the tapering spires of country churches, the 
 flash of white sails, and the foaming wake of the 
 ferry between the opposite towns. 
 
 One of the strongest swimmers among the 
 sturdy country boys about Nyack, he had swum 
 the river, a good three and a half miles, more than 
 once, and this scene in all its simple loveliness 
 was old and sweetly old to his young eyes. 
 
 The day held the moods of a petulant and 
 pretty woman. Patches of shadow chased patches 
 of sunshine over the hills and across the bosom 
 of the Hudson, strangely streaking the river with 
 bright, dancing wave-crests and grotesque and 
 almost baleful ribbons of mourning. 
 
 The train paused at Scarborough and was off 
 again in less than a minute. Suddenly the eyes
 
 66 
 
 of the boy at the window encountered total 
 darkness and to his ears came the din of a rail- 
 road tunnel. 
 
 The burglar beside him awoke and began to 
 mutter again. Having relieved himself of sufficient 
 hate, he tugged at the wrist to which his own 
 was chained and, in the darkness, said: " We're 
 here." 
 
 The short tunnel was, in fact, directly under 
 the entrance to Sing Sing prison. In a few seconds 
 the train cleared the tunnel and stopped at 
 Ossining station. 
 
 A covered tumbril was ready to take them up the 
 steep road from the station to the highway run- 
 ning south and to the prison. The team of 
 horses struggled upward, straining and panting, 
 and, reaching the highway, stopped to blow. 
 The convicted men had a few more precious 
 moments in which they could feast their eyes with 
 glimpses of sky, river and hills through the open 
 front and rear of the vehicle. 
 
 The road they were on was the main artery 
 of travel through the Cabbage Patch of the 
 prison town. It was lined with tumbledown 
 cottages occupied by negroes and foreigners.
 
 THE QUARRY 67 
 
 But as battered and as leaky as was the worst 
 of the shanties, there was a tiny flower garden, 
 a patch of growing vegetables, sometimes a 
 chicken yard, and always children and the wide 
 arch of sky overhead for each. 
 
 At the end of the road loomed a barracklike 
 building of gray stone, fast blackening with the 
 years. It was the first of the prison structures 
 and about it ran a high and wide wall. At reg- 
 ular intervals upon this wall were little octagonal 
 sentry houses and in each of these stood a man 
 with a rifle. The building, rising high above the 
 wall, had narrow slits in its sheer stone sides and 
 these slits were criss-crossed with steel bars. 
 
 Within this structure a cell awaited Mont- 
 gomery. It would be his resting place at night 
 after the day's work in the shops of the walled 
 city of silence, sorrow, sweat and celibacy. Of 
 the outside world he would see only a patch of 
 sky squared by the steel bars. He would be as 
 the police thought a yeggman should be buried 
 alive. 
 
 The van stopped before the gray portals of the 
 building and the six convicts were lined up at the 
 curb. On either side of them, in front of the
 
 68 THE QUARRY 
 
 administration building, stretched plots of well 
 trimmed lawn, centered with beds of salvia and 
 geraniums as crimson as the sins of those who 
 had gone their way before. 
 
 The men lining the curb still held that pride 
 which is inherent and imperishable in the higher 
 order of animals, however evil may be their 
 case. As the officer in charge of the guards and 
 prisoners entered the building to deliver the com- 
 mitment papers to the warden, they clustered 
 close together, hiding the bright handcuffs even 
 from those who understood their plight. They 
 peered curiously into the shadowy depths of the 
 wide-arched entrance as they waited. 
 
 The officer returned and the little column 
 followed to the gateway south of the main en- 
 trance to the building. They entered and the 
 gate closed upon them as they began to pay the 
 penalty exacted by the law.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY was stripped of his 
 clothes and finally stripped of his name. 
 Both were thrown away. He became Num- 
 ber 60,108. 
 
 He stood naked under the examination of the 
 prison physician and was then placed under a 
 shower bath and washed clean. Garments made 
 by convicts were given him, ill-fitting underwear, 
 heavy shoes and a dull gray suit of baggy trousers 
 and almost shapeless jacket. He noticed that 
 on the left sleeve of his coat there was a white 
 disc. He was questioned by a deputy warden 
 and replied that he could read and write and 
 that he had been through the public school at 
 Nyack. He told the deputy that he was an ap- 
 prentice machinist. He was reported to the 
 foreman of the machine shop as available material 
 for his force. 
 
 Montgomery was struck by the quiet of 
 the prison. There was no sound of voices. Con-
 
 70 THE QUARRY 
 
 victs came and went or busied themselves in 
 groups over prison tasks but they did not con- 
 verse. He was informed that the rule of silence 
 was strictly enforced and that he might talk 
 only at the close of work and when he was in his 
 cell. He was of a taciturn nature, but when he 
 thought that the rule of silence would obtain 
 through his whole lifetime, the thing became 
 appalling. He had the privilege of a cell by 
 himself or with a cellmate. For the sake of the 
 human voice he would hear in the morning before 
 work and at night after work, he asked to be 
 allowed to share a cell. 
 
 The fifteen-year man made the same request 
 and the old burglar and the country boy became 
 cell companions. 
 
 They separated for the time being. Number 
 60,108 was sent to the machine shops and turned 
 over to the convict foreman, who questioned 
 him and tested him as to the value and use of 
 many tools and who found him worthy and well 
 qualified for a place on his staff. The burglar 
 needed no examination of that sort. He had been 
 through it all before. He was given the working 
 tools of his craft and began cutting garments with
 
 THE QUARRY 71 
 
 other prisoners, who gave him looks of recog- 
 nition and signalled greetings with their fingers 
 in the deaf and dumb code or clicked out tele- 
 graphic messages in the Morse with their scissors. 
 
 The midday meal in the mess hall was choked 
 down by Montgomery with a mighty effort. His 
 interest in machinery kept him from breaking 
 down during the afternoon. After the evening 
 meal, he was marched to his prison tier with a 
 battalion of convicts and a guard showed him his 
 cell. He found the fifteen-year man already 
 there. 
 
 Every cell on the tier was a busy phonograph 
 by this time, for the rule of silence was now 
 suspended and the men could talk all they pleased 
 in the cells or from cell to cell. When the chatter 
 became a babel of sound, a guard warned those 
 talking loudest and the roar would die down. 
 
 " Well, what you in for and for how long? " 
 
 The country boy turned to the questioning 
 burglar. " I was convicted of murder. I am in for 
 life." 
 
 The burglar grunted and scanned the face of 
 his cellmate closely. 
 
 "My name's Bill Bill Hawkins," he said.
 
 72 THE QUARRY 
 
 " I'm in for burglary. You're green. I'll put 
 you next to things." 
 
 Bill was eager to talk and paused for a moment 
 as if considering the line of conversation or mon- 
 ologue he would indulge in. 
 
 " You got the white disc," he began finally. 
 " If you keep it, they'll let you have newspapers 
 and eats and tobacco. It's the first term disc. 
 Mine's red. This is my third trip. Second term 
 men wear a blue disc. As soon as any one of us 
 violates a regulation, off goes the disc, Kid, and 
 you'll never win it back. Get that? " 
 
 Montgomery nodded. 
 
 The burglar sat on the edge of the lower bunk, 
 crouching so that his head was free from the 
 upper. Bill saw that the boy was interested and 
 continued, moodily and reflectively. 
 
 " There was one guy kept the white disc for 
 thirty years," he said. " He killed a man in 
 Brooklyn and was in for life, just like you. He 
 never broke a single rule all that time. Each 
 year he got a white chevron and at the end of 
 each five years a white star in place of the chev- 
 rons. He was a wonder. We called him ' The 
 Saint ' and * Dago John.' Rugini and his gang
 
 THE QUARRY 73 
 
 called him * II Santo ' in their language. It's 
 hard to keep the disc for a month, Kid, believe 
 me. I tried it when I first come in. But the 
 Saint he kept it thirty years. As he was in for 
 life, he couldn't get no commutation and so one 
 day a new prison superintendent asked him why 
 he kept piling up all the good marks. He told 
 the supe that he wanted to die outside and was 
 hoping for mercy. He wasn't such a fool after 
 all, for they turned him out in time and none of 
 us saw his funeral." 
 
 Thirty years of perfect prison conduct so 
 that he might die as a human being that God 
 had created and not be wiped out as a number 
 from a board! Montgomery was shocked and 
 thrilled by the brief story. 
 
 Bill explained that after a year of perfect con- 
 duct he would be given a white chevron to add 
 to the disc and it would entitle him to write a 
 letter once every two weeks, and that once every 
 month he might purchase little articles for his 
 comfort. 
 
 " But you can't slip 'em along to any of your 
 friends," he said. " If you do and they catch 
 you, it is good night for the white disc and the
 
 74 THE QUARRY 
 
 chevron and all the good marks that would 
 count for a commutation man." 
 
 After four years of perfect conduct marked 
 by the disc and four white chevrons, Bill ex- 
 plained, he would be allowed to receive visits from 
 friends once a month, could write a letter once a 
 week, could receive a box of cooked food every 
 three months from home if he had a home 
 and could take a newspaper and keep it for two 
 days on a stretch. 
 
 For these instructions the boy thanked his 
 cellmate simply. 
 
 " Don't call me Mister Hawkins," protested 
 Bill. " Call me Bill. This ain't any place for the 
 mister business." 
 
 Bill had gradually loosened his clothes as he 
 talked. He was now ready to retire. Mont- 
 gomery saw him lift his long, powerful arms and 
 take hold upon the edge of the upper pallet. 
 Without touching the lower one with his feet, 
 he drew himself up and swung into bed with the 
 agility and ease of an orang. 
 
 " Good night," he grunted from above. 
 
 Montgomery prepared to retire and when he 
 was ready to creep under his blanket he knelt and
 
 THE QUARRY 75 
 
 bowed his head. The cell lights had been turned 
 out. Hearing no sound from below, Bill leaned 
 over the edge of his pallet and peered into the 
 checkered shadows made by the tier lights shining 
 through their bars. He saw the boy in prayer 
 and held his peace. 
 
 James Montgomery had started the long tread- 
 mill jaunt to the grave of a life convict. The gong 
 awakened him in the morning and he fell in line 
 outside with the men of his tier, to be counted and 
 accounted for in the morning report of his tier 
 warden. The morning meal was dispatched in 
 silence, as prescribed by the rules, and he started 
 work in the machine shops. 
 
 The careful training his old mother had given 
 him stood him in good stead. Every task that 
 came to his hand he did cleanly and quickly. 
 He found that the dreaded rule of silence was an 
 advantage. He had much to learn about ma- 
 chinery and could apply himself to getting this 
 knowledge without distraction of any sort. His 
 foreman found him efficient, steady in his work 
 and willing. He promised to become one of the 
 most useful men who ever worked in prison garb. 
 
 The weeks passed into months and the months
 
 76 THE QUARRY 
 
 finally rounded out a year, and Number 60,108 
 had a white chevron sewed to his sleeve under 
 the white disc. 
 
 During the first year he had been as much cut 
 off from the outer world as if he had gone down 
 to the bottom of the sea with the crew of a sunken 
 submarine. Now he was given pencil and paper. 
 He had earned the privilege of writing a letter. 
 His heart hungered for a word from or about his 
 mother. 
 
 Resting a pad of paper on his knee, he sat on 
 the edge of his cot after the end of a year's work 
 to write to her. 
 
 The task was a mighty one. The very be- 
 ginning of the letter with the words, " Dear 
 Mother " shook his whole nature. His hand 
 trembled violently and his heart beat so fast 
 that he felt weak and ill. A great sorrow envel- 
 oped him, so great that it left no room for bitter- 
 ness or protest. Just the touch of her dear hand, 
 just a glimpse of her dear, sweet face and the 
 sound of one spoken word from her lips! Could 
 any boon under heaven be as great? 
 
 The tears filled his eyes and fell upon the sheet 
 of paper. He turned from the task. The stretch
 
 THE QUARRY 77 
 
 of hopeless, barren years for both of them was 
 before his mind's eye. He threw himself on his 
 cot and sobbed. 
 
 His burglar cellmate moved about uneasily, 
 not knowing what to say or do in the presence 
 of such distress. 
 
 " Say, Kid," he said at last, " get a strangle 
 hold on the job. Don't let it floor you. Don't 
 be taking the count, old fellow. Gimme a chance 
 and I'll write the letter for you, if you tell me 
 how to spell the words right." 
 
 Montgomery felt the kindness and humanity in 
 the offer. He pulled himself from the cot and 
 turned to him. If the burglar did have the jaw, 
 the brow and arms of a gorilla and if he was a 
 menace to society, there was yet within him that 
 element which makes even the worst of us at 
 times partake of the divine in human existence. 
 
 " I'm all right now, Bill," said the boy. " Thank 
 you. I just lost my nerve for a minute. I want 
 to write my mother and I didn't know what to tell 
 her." 
 
 "Tell her?" echoed Bill. "Why, there's lots 
 to tell her. Tell her about the white disc you still 
 got on your arm and about the white chevron.
 
 78 THE QUARRY 
 
 Tell her you're the best boy in the Sunday-school 
 and always know your lesson. Tell her that every 
 time you get a white stripe there's something doing 
 for a big, fine record and that after awhile they 
 will let you out for being so good." 
 
 The suggestion was a worthy one. He would 
 tell her all of this, as the practical sense of the 
 old burglar had advised. He would tell her also 
 of his advance in his craft, of the new tools he had 
 learned to use, of the machinery he was already 
 building and repairing, and of his plans for per- 
 fecting mechanical devices. He would draw a 
 picture of inventions he had in mind and that he 
 would have patented, of the fortune that he would 
 make some day, and of the spending of that for- 
 tune to gain his liberty and prove his innocence. 
 
 "That's the stuff, Kid," exclaimed the de- 
 lighted old burglar. " You're bound to put it 
 over on them yet. You got brains. The warden 
 will help you get your patent and there's plenty 
 of lawyers in this place to draw up the applica- 
 tions. Before you know it you will have money 
 rolling in on you and with money you can do any- 
 thing in this world. You can buy political in- 
 fluence enough to get a pardon. Go to it, son,
 
 THE QUARRY 79 
 
 and make the old lady think that you'll soon be 
 out and be a rich man, too." 
 
 The boy started his letter again and wrote until 
 the signal sent them to their cots with lights out. 
 
 In the morning Bill was ready with more sug- 
 gestions. 
 
 " If I could stomach all these rules like you," 
 he said, " I wouldn't serve half my term, believe 
 me. Once they get to trusting you, they watch you 
 less. You come and go like a trusty and then some 
 day you'll see your chance for a getaway and off 
 you go. And if you ever get a start, all you got 
 to do is to beat it over the river to the West Shore 
 tracks and hop a fast freight for the Hackensack 
 meadows. You'd be as safe there as in a jungle. 
 If the mosquitoes don't eat you alive, you can 
 take your time and as soon as you get a coat and 
 a pair of pants you're all right." 
 
 ' You mean try to escape? " asked Montgomery. 
 
 " Sure," replied Bill. " Why not? You're in 
 for life and they can't add nothing to your sen- 
 tence." 
 
 "But the pardon?" 
 
 ' You might have to wait fifty years," said 
 Bill, " and what's the use of getting out then?
 
 80 THE QUARRY 
 
 You would starve to death. When the time comes, 
 I'll lend you a hand, Kid. There'll be a way of 
 slipping you a little money and getting clothes 
 for you." 
 
 Montgomery felt a curious little thrill of pleasure 
 at the suggestion. 
 
 The burglar was watching him closely and to 
 his heavy features came a look of satisfaction 
 as he realized that the boy had taken hold of 
 the idea. 
 
 " There's lots of time, lots of time," he warned. 
 " Don't be in any hurry. Just keep at your job, 
 but all the time keep your eyes skinned for the 
 chance. It will come some day, sure." 
 
 Into the solemn, brown eyes of the boy there 
 came the sparkle of hope. Already he pictured 
 himself far off in some distant country, starting 
 life under another name. He would make a good 
 living wherever machinery was used. He was 
 already an expert mechanic and in a few years 
 his inventive mind would develop and he might 
 turn out improvements that might mean a fortune 
 to him. With money he could secretly prosecute 
 a search for the man who had killed the night 
 watchman of the bank. His name would be
 
 THE QUARRY 81 
 
 cleared and he could step in the open once again 
 and live the life God had intended him to live. 
 
 " You're only a kid," said Bill, as they pre- 
 pared to answer the mess call for breakfast. 
 " Mind what I'm telling you. Take your time. 
 You can afford to wait five years yet, if necessary." 
 
 " I'll be careful," whispered Montgomery.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NUMBER 60,108 began to count the hours 
 and days to the probable moment when 
 he would receive an answer to his first 
 letter from prison. 
 
 His home was hardly more than twelve miles 
 away from Sing Sing but it was across the river and 
 well out in the country. It would depend upon 
 the rural system for its delivery. As it traveled 
 on its way, he let his mind follow it with many ten- 
 der and yet distressing thoughts of her who would 
 receive it. 
 
 How had she stood the shock, the sorrow and the 
 shame of his conviction? He knew that she fully 
 believed in his innocence, but it was more than 
 probable that in and about Nyack there were 
 scores of people who would say that the vaunted 
 Bertillon system could not lie and that the print 
 of his finger on the blood-stained wrench was 
 surely a stamp of his guilt.
 
 THE QUARRY 83 
 
 There would be unkind people who would seek 
 to avoid further acquaintance with the mother 
 of a young man convicted of brutal murder for 
 the sake of robbery. But there would be kind 
 people also, such as had journeyed to the city to 
 testify for him. With these conflicting thoughts 
 he went about his work in the machine shop with 
 constantly increasing nervousness and anxiety. 
 
 Two days passed and the looked-for letter came. 
 It was delivered to him O. K.'d by the deputy in 
 charge of the correspondence department. He 
 studied the handwriting on the envelope. It was 
 not in the old-fashioned script of his mother, and 
 his hands shook as he drew forth the letter and 
 unfolded it. 
 
 He glanced at the signature and read the name 
 of Margaret Wadhams, a friend and neighbor of 
 his mother. She wrote that his mother had been 
 very ill and that her eyesight was failing rapidly. 
 She could not see well enough to write and 
 had asked Miss Wadhams to do the writing 
 for her. 
 
 " She tells me to write you only a bright letter," 
 wrote Miss Wadhams, " but I think it is my duty 
 to tell you that your dear mother has broken very
 
 84 THE QUARRY 
 
 rapidly and I believe that she has not many more 
 days to live. Her heart was crushed by the 
 blow that fell upon you and that was only in- 
 tended for you, James. She is patient and prays 
 constantly that some day your innocence will be 
 established. 
 
 " Garrett, the New York lawyer who defended 
 you, wrote to her and urged her to mortgage the 
 house and raise enough money so that he could 
 take an appeal to the higher courts. She was 
 eager to do this, but I prevailed upon her to see 
 Mr. Westervelt, the Nyack lawyer, first. Mr. 
 Westervelt said that the lawyer was a robber of 
 widows and the poor and that he would not let 
 her get out of his hands until she had sold her 
 very clothes. He took up the matter without a fee, 
 like the kind man that he is, and said that it was 
 utterly useless to take an appeal. He said that 
 there was no chance of offsetting the evidence 
 against you unless the real slayer of the watchman 
 was found." 
 
 Montgomery put down the letter with a feeling 
 of great weariness. What hope he held had been 
 nourished, warmed over and kept alive by day 
 and by night because of his mother. He wanted
 
 THE QUARRY 85 
 
 her to live until the red stain of a murder charge 
 was taken from her name and from his. He did 
 not want her to die while he was in prison. 
 
 " She keeps the clothes you wore when you were 
 a little boy always near her," the letter continued. 
 " She has the picture taken of you at the county 
 fair and it is a great comfort to her. " 
 
 Number 60,108 again put aside the letter and 
 sat staring at the steel wall of his cell while he 
 fought to master his emotion. Bill Hawkins stood 
 at the grated door, immovable, hideous perhaps, 
 but solemn, and in his little eyes there was the 
 light of uneasiness that shows in the eyes of a 
 dumb animal when it looks upon a master suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 Montgomery read the last page. Miss Wad- 
 hams, in her provincial way, had tried to inject 
 into this sad missive a note of cheer. She and 
 other friends would always see that the little 
 mother was all right. He need never worry about 
 her bodily comfort. The flower garden was pretty 
 during the past summer, just as pretty as it was 
 when he left the summer before to seek work in the 
 city. The Williamson house next door had been 
 sold and was going to be put in good repair.
 
 86 THE QUARRY 
 
 Old Mr. Williamson, so long a friend and fellow 
 lodge member with his father, had died and the 
 family was broken up. 
 
 He finished this gossip of a well intentioned 
 friend while there pounded in his head the fright- 
 ening thought: his mother was nearing death. 
 He might never see her face again, not even for the 
 final parting of son and mother. 
 
 For a moment he thought frantically of trying 
 to break out of prison and hurrying to her. If 
 he could get a little start, he could swim the Hudson 
 and make his way home in time to kneel beside 
 her bed, clasp her thin hands in his and comfort 
 her and breathe his love to her as she passed into 
 the valley of the shadow. He glanced about him 
 as if in the hope that God would bring some miracle 
 to pass and that the steel walls and bars would 
 melt and the stone crumble. 
 
 Bill had swung himself up into his bunk. Mont- 
 gomery looked up and saw his little eyes watching 
 him keenly. His attitude was that of a great 
 beast crouched for a spring upon his prey. But 
 ugly as was the face that hung over the iron ledge 
 above, there was a strange softening of the lines, 
 a melting of the features. There was compassion
 
 THE QUARRY 87 
 
 illumining the countenance of this creature with 
 prognathous jaw and sloping brow. 
 
 "Trouble at home, Kid?" he asked, his harsh 
 voice mellowing with the kindly spirit that 
 prompted the question. 
 
 Number 60,108 nodded his head. The open 
 letter in his hands told the tale. 
 
 " Gee, I wish you knew how to cuss, Kid," 
 sighed the burglar. " When things come hard on 
 me I get rid of it all with a good, long, healthy 
 swear. It does me an awful lot of good. I learned 
 the art from Cockney Tim Maddigan, who's over 
 in Clinton prison now, doing three sixes. He could 
 certainly swear. One time down in the old Gas 
 House district, I heard him rip 'em out so that 
 Scar Reilley almost fainted with envy. I took 
 lessons from him." 
 
 The boy shook his head but the earnestness of 
 his cell companion brought the faint flicker of a 
 smile to his lips. 
 
 Bill realized that he had turned the boy's 
 thoughts away from his bitter introspection for 
 the moment at any rate and he followed up the 
 good work. 
 
 " They used to call me ' Roaring Bill 'Awkins,' "
 
 88 THE QUARRY 
 
 he went on. " Being as you don't know how to 
 swear artistic and satisfactory, I'll just swear for 
 you. No, don't object. I'll think 'em to myself 
 and not say a thing out loud." 
 
 He swung down from his high pallet. 
 
 There was still a half hour before the lights 
 would be cut off and this was the best possible 
 time for violating prison regulations. 
 
 " You stand at the door and keep a sharp look- 
 out, Kid," he said. " I want to take a peek at this 
 newspaper you've won by good conduct." 
 
 The first newspaper that had reached their cell 
 lay unfolded on Montgomery's bed. 
 
 Bill turned his back to the door as the boy stood 
 guard and hungrily read the headlines, scanned the 
 illustrations and revelled in a luxury he had not 
 earned. 
 
 The discovery of this violation by a guard would 
 have cost Montgomery his white disc and the loss 
 of forty-five marks. He gave a sigh of relief when 
 the lights went out and Bill could no longer im- 
 peril the disc and chevron on his sleeve. 
 
 The boy was half asleep when Bill leaned over 
 the edge of his resting place and whispered: 
 "Kid!"
 
 THE QUARRY 89 
 
 Montgomery rose on his elbow and whispered 
 back that he was listening. 
 
 " I got a scheme that's a wonder," Bill told him. 
 " You know what I told you about getting a suit 
 of clothes for the getaway? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I got it all doped out." 
 
 " How will you manage it? " 
 
 " Never mind." He chuckled under his breath. 
 " And as for a hat! Say, Kid, I can get any kind 
 of a hat you want to wear. But I'll tell you about 
 it in the morning."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOWEVER bright and sweet the outside 
 world may be at the rising of the sun, 
 every break of day is as twilight to the 
 prisoners in Sing Sing. The little, barred slits 
 in the gray walls admit only light enough to make 
 corridor and cell shadows deeper and more fan- 
 tastic. 
 
 Number 60,108 and Bill Hawkins were out of 
 their bunks before the clanging of the bell. Bill 
 grinned very knowingly as they pulled into their 
 baggy gray suits. He crooked his right index 
 finger and held it before the boy. 
 
 " See that? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," replied Montgomery, wondering. 
 
 " It is exactly one inch, that second joint. I'm 
 going to measure you for your suit. Turn around." 
 
 Montgomery turned, facing the door, and Bill 
 stepped behind him. He felt the finger joint press- 
 ing against his shoulders, as Bill took the dimen- 
 sions for the piece of the coat he was to fashion
 
 THE QUARRY 91 
 
 surreptitiously. As he worked, he explained his 
 scheme in a whisper. 
 
 " The color of the cloth is all right," he said, 
 " but it is the baggy shape of the coat and pants 
 that gets an escaped convict in Dutch. I'll re- 
 member these measurements and swipe the stuff 
 and cut it in the shop. I'll do one piece at a time. 
 In the cutting room there's Isaacs, the Butcher, 
 on my right and Idaho Shorty on my left. They'll 
 be blind. They won't say a thing to anybody and 
 they won't see a thing. I'll smuggle in the suit 
 piece by piece and swipe the basting stuff, needles 
 and thread." He finished the three dimensions 
 of the first piece of the coat he was to make and was 
 satisfied. 
 
 " One piece at a time," he said to himself. 
 " When I get 'em all done, I'll sew 'em together by 
 hand right here in this handsome little one-room 
 flat." 
 
 Montgomery's experienced burglar friend was 
 taking the same interest in him that a father would 
 take in a son at college commencement time. 
 
 " When the suit is ready," he told the boy, 
 " you're to put it on under your prison clothes. 
 Then, when you get on the outside, you can peel
 
 92 THE QUARRY 
 
 off, stick a hat on your head and beat it." He 
 laughed softly to himself. 
 
 " And as for hats," he whispered, " it's a good 
 thing I didn't forget that. You couldn't wear 
 that little cheese-box outside, and you couldn't 
 go bareheaded. Everybody in a crowd looks 
 twice at a bareheaded man. But we'll have no 
 trouble about the hat. I'll get one swiped, an 
 old cast-off kelly from one of the prison offices." 
 
 The boy wondered at the goodness and kindness 
 that lay hidden in the heart of this old offender 
 against society, who looked almost a monstrosity 
 and yet was as gentle as a child. 
 
 " Just keep your young noodle clear," advised 
 Bill. " Don't be in any hurry. Whenever you 
 see a chance that promises, tell me about it and 
 we'll talk it over. All the time I'll be working on 
 this suit and I'm going to make a swell job of 
 it, see?" 
 
 " And suppose I do get out, Bill," suggested 
 Montgomery, " and I patent my inventions and 
 make a fortune; how am I ever going to repay 
 you?" 
 
 " Well, I'm fifty years old, now," replied the 
 burglar. " When I get out I'll be sixty-five and
 
 THE QUARRY 93 
 
 still a burglar, perhaps. Mebbe I'll be able to 
 run in on you somewhere and you can help me keep 
 straight, give me a job, lock me up at night and 
 treat me like a human being in the daytime. I 
 ain't been treated like a human in so long I've 
 clean forgot how it feels." 
 
 The old burglar's face clouded for a moment 
 and his heavy jaw clamped tighter. 
 
 " Say, Kid," he said huskily, " never breathe 
 it, will you? I had a boy of my own once. He'd 
 be just your age if he'd lived. I wanted him to 
 live and that's why I'm here. I needed more money 
 than I could make to send him to the mountains 
 to be cured of the white bugs the T. B. I just 
 had to get the money and so I went in on a house- 
 breaking job. Well, the boy didn't get to the 
 mountains; he died of consumption. The cops 
 got me and I came to this place for my first 
 bit." 
 
 Montgomery could say nothing. His heart was 
 filled with pity and sympathy for his friend. 
 
 " I ain't in the habit of squealin' when I'm 
 hurt," Bill went on after a pause, " but I don't 
 mind telling you that if I could have got away with 
 the swag and turned it into money for that boy of
 
 94 THE QUARRY 
 
 mine, I wouldn't have minded going up for the 
 five years I got. But one of the gang hollered and 
 the bulls got all the loot. When I got out after my 
 bit, the boy was dead and his mother was well, 
 she was worse than dead, they told me. It ain't 
 the man who goes to prison that does all the suffer- 
 ing. It's his wife and babies that take the punish- 
 ment." 
 
 " Could you find her your wife? " asked Bill's 
 protege. 
 
 " Find her? " he repeated. " I found where she 
 started to join the down-and-outs and that was 
 enough for Bill. And she was a good girl, too. 
 I didn't want to see her finish. She had seen me 
 try to steal and get away with it and saw what 
 happened to Bill. She was afraid to try the same 
 game. The police didn't mind her doing the other 
 thing. All she had to do was to give up to the 
 cops a little piece of change every now and then. 
 I guess she got to be a regular a regular 
 cruiser." 
 
 The voice of Bill Hawkins had become hollow. 
 It was as if his share of trouble had driven from 
 him every trace of human emotion and feeling. 
 But with the last ugly word of his brief narrative
 
 THE QUARRY 95 
 
 the voice broke and Number 60,108 saw that his 
 hands trembled. 
 
 " A cruiser? " asked the boy. 
 
 " You don't know what that means," replied 
 Bill. " It means a woman for sale on the streets." 
 
 Both were silent as they finished preparing to 
 answer roll-call and march to the mess hall for 
 breakfast. 
 
 " Bill," Montgomery finally suggested, " per- 
 haps if I get out and all goes well, I might be able 
 to find her and help her. I'd treat her almost as 
 if she was my own mother." 
 
 "You would!" gasped the burglar. "You 
 would, boy? " 
 
 " I would be glad to." 
 
 " But she's gone wrong." 
 
 " It wasn't her fault." 
 
 The gong clanged and they stepped to their 
 cell door, as did sixteen hundred others in the 
 walled city of silence. 
 
 The old burglar put a hand on Montgomery's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Boy," he said, " you got a heart of gold."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 TO put the risk of detection at its minimum, 
 Bill Hawkins proceeded with his task 
 of making the suit of clothes for his com- 
 panion's getaway with such caution that it prom- 
 ised to cover a whole year of work. 
 
 To steal the cloth, piece by piece, was no easy 
 task. The eyes of the guards were keen and there 
 were convicts who were suspected of doing the work 
 of spies for the prison officials. Every night for 
 a month Bill reported to Montgomery his efforts 
 of the day, and at the end of that time he brought 
 under his blouse enough cloth for the first section 
 of the suit. 
 
 To cut it in the dimensions he had rivetted in 
 his memory was even a harder task. The greatest 
 care was taken to prevent the theft of tools, and a 
 missing pair of scissors would have resulted in a 
 search of the cells of all those who worked in the 
 cutting room. He was compelled to cut the cloth 
 right under the noses of the guards in the cutting
 
 THE QUARRY 97 
 
 room. "The Butcher" and "Idaho Shorty" 
 sheltered him as much as they could as he worked 
 furtively and quickly, and, finally, after two 
 months, the first piece of the coat was made. It 
 was smuggled into the cell and stowed away in 
 the mattress of Bill's bunk. Stolen needles and 
 thread were used to sew up the seams of the mat- 
 tress again. 
 
 Montgomery could have stolen a sharp knife 
 from the machine shop so that Bill could work in 
 the cell, but the old burglar would not let him 
 run the risk. Discovery of such a theft would have 
 meant the loss of disc and chevrons and a transfer 
 to some other branch of prison work. 
 
 The second autumn in prison passed into the 
 second winter and Bill still stuck to his task. 
 Spring came and all of the pieces for the coat 
 were ready and in the cell, safely hidden away. 
 To assemble them Bill would have to make every 
 stitch by hand. 
 
 At night, after the supper hour, the two prison- 
 ers washed out their towels and hung them on a 
 piece of string in their cell. Behind these the 
 burglar crouched as Montgomery watched at the 
 door. He sewed until the lights went out but the
 
 98 THE QUARRY 
 
 work was slow and painful. He had no thimble and 
 one finger after another was worked into a pulpy 
 condition. The making of the coat took all sum- 
 mer but Bill was so interested in the task that he 
 even sewed in his bunk after the lights were turned 
 off, feeling every stitch in the dark with raw fingers 
 that spilled blood, but with patience that never 
 flagged. 
 
 Another year was started and the coat was 
 finished. Bill stole the cloth for the trousers 
 which would replace the tubelike nether gar- 
 ment of the prison uniform. With never a word 
 of complaint and never a sigh of fatigue, Bill 
 Hawkins tackled the final stretch of his self-im- 
 posed slavery. Every half hour during the night 
 the tier guard made a round of the cells, flashing 
 his hand electric light upon each bunk. Bill could 
 sense his coming and would feign sleep, with his 
 work under his body, as he reached his cell. 
 
 All the while Number 60,108 was perfecting 
 himself in mechanical work. His ability and in- 
 dustry were fully appreciated by the deputy 
 warden in charge of the machine shop and he ad- 
 vanced rapidly to the point where he was given 
 the more intricate tasks, requiring delicacy of
 
 THE QUARRY 99 
 
 work and much careful thought. His splendid 
 record for conduct also added to the favors he 
 received and soon he was informed that he would 
 be the man to succeed the convict foreman, when 
 he was given his liberty. 
 
 As foreman of the shop, Montgomery would have 
 a degree of liberty given to few convicts. On busy 
 days he would be exempt from roll calls, and, when 
 the care of machinery required it, he could spend 
 his evenings in the shop. He would superintend 
 the acceptance and assembling of all new machines 
 and parts of machines and the disposal of the old. 
 
 The coveted white disc remained on his sleeve 
 and a new chevron was added with each year. 
 
 " We'll wait until you get the job as foreman," 
 Bill decided. " When you take charge and get the 
 hang of things, then we can plan the way out. 
 Another year or two ain't going to hurt you. 
 You want to get such a start, once you're out, 
 that they won't close in on you and drag you back, 
 Kid. It's worth waiting for." 
 
 One day Number 60,108 was called from his 
 task and given a new blouse. On the left sleeve 
 was a clean white disc and under it, where the 
 chevrons had been, a white star. This signified
 
 100 THE QUARRY 
 
 that he had served five years with perfect conduct. 
 That same day the convict foreman went before 
 the board of parole and was allowed time off due 
 him for his good marks shown on the prison record. 
 He was allowed a day for every three marks, the 
 total being subtracted from his sentence. 
 
 Montgomery became the foreman and took 
 charge of the machine shop force. He was now 
 twenty-six years old and had developed from a 
 scrawny country boy into a well-built and hand- 
 some man. His eyes were grave and his mien 
 serious. He appeared to be well beyond thirty 
 years of age. 
 
 During the early part of this fifth year, Mont- 
 gomery had begun to steel himself for the news 
 from home that would tell him that his mother's 
 life was closed. She was hopelessly blind, wrote 
 Miss Wadhams, and was worn to a shadow. He 
 was ready for the trial and knew that it was at 
 hand when a trusty brought him a black-bordered 
 letter with an order granting him permission to 
 retire to his cell for the rest of the day. 
 
 He left the machine shop and in the quiet of 
 the deserted tier read the message. 
 
 ' Your mother died calling your name," wrote
 
 THE QUARRY 101 
 
 Miss Wadhams. " She seemed to behold your 
 face and it appeared as if she was talking to you. 
 She smiled very sweetly, as if there had never 
 been a trouble come in her life. She sighed and 
 her blind eyes closed forever." 
 
 " Oh, mother I Oh, my mother, my mother! " 
 sobbed the young man, dropping to his knees. 
 
 Bill found him praying beside his cot when he 
 came in at the close of the day's work. The black- 
 bordered envelope in Montgomery's hand told 
 him as much as words could tell him. He patted 
 his grieving companion on the shoulder as a 
 father would caress, a son in dire trouble. 
 
 In the shelter of their towels, stretched across 
 the cell, he drew the completed gray suit from its 
 hiding-place. 
 
 Montgomery rose to his feet. 
 
 " They put in the new machinery this week, 
 Kid, don't they? " Bill asked. 
 
 Montgomery nodded. 
 
 " And they ship out the old machines? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, it's time to make the getaway."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE prison warden desired to install the 
 new machinery at night so that he could 
 save all possible loss of actual working 
 time of the convicts. He conferred with his new 
 foreman and Montgomery declared the plan 
 feasible. By having crates and boxes built in 
 the carpentry division and in readiness, the 
 work of shipping out the displaced machinery 
 could be rushed while the new was being put 
 up. 
 
 The new foreman was instructed to go ahead, 
 make measurements for the crates and have the 
 work done and the product delivered to him in the 
 machine shop. 
 
 The new equipment was on the freight plat- 
 forms at the Ossining station. All that was neces- 
 sary was to have it brought to the prison and in- 
 stalled after the whistle blew for the end of the 
 regular day's work.
 
 THE QUARRY 103 
 
 Montgomery busied himself with these pre- 
 liminaries and among the boxes he had constructed 
 was one about six feet in length and oblong in 
 shape. It was the coffin that would take him from 
 a living grave to the heaven of clean air, sunlight 
 and wide sky. 
 
 He found it necessary to make certain changes 
 in the construction of this particular box. The 
 top was screwed down and an opening was made 
 at one end. In the clutter and clatter of work at- 
 tending the preparations for the quick replacement 
 of the old machinery, the eyes of the keenest guard 
 would not have noticed that the headpiece of this 
 particular box was so built that it could be closed 
 and made fast from within. 
 
 The last shipment out at night would be at 
 eleven o'clock. When the whistle blew, half an 
 hour before the call for supper, Montgomery 
 went to his cell to wash up. The other convicts 
 were being marched from the shops to their tiers 
 and the stone walls echoed the tramping of their 
 feet. Ranks were broken in the corridors between 
 the cells in the dormitories. 
 
 Bill and Montgomery reached their cell to- 
 gether. The time was at hand for the attempt at
 
 104 THE QUARRY 
 
 escape. The burglar ripped open his mattress and 
 drew out the gray suit. 
 
 " Be fast now," advised Bill. " I'll cover the 
 door. Get out of your clothes and get the suit 
 on, then slip the regulars over them." 
 
 Montgomery had stripped off his blouse when 
 the signal for assembly sounded suddenly. 
 
 Both men started with fear. The signal meant 
 an inspection and had come, as it always does, 
 without warning. For a moment Bill hesitated 
 in thought. Then he grabbed the suit of gray from 
 Montgomery's hands and swathed it about his 
 own body under his blouse. 
 
 The men were already lining up in the corridor, 
 and they joined them. The cause for the assembly 
 was soon made known in whispers and signs 
 passed along by the convicts. Some one in the 
 cutting room had stolen two pairs of scissors and a 
 bodkin, both dangerous weapons. The cell of 
 every man working in that department would be 
 searched. 
 
 There were only five men, including Bill, in 
 that tier who worked at tailoring. Two guards 
 searched their cells and the five men were or- 
 dered to step to the front. Guards searched them
 
 THE QUARRY 105 
 
 carefully. One of the searchers pulled up Bill's 
 blouse and saw the hidden suit of clothes. He 
 looked up with astonishment for he had expected 
 no such find. 
 
 " What's this? " he demanded. 
 
 Bill made no answer. He was white with rage 
 and dismay. 
 
 The warden in charge of the tier was summoned 
 and the suit was examined carefully. 
 
 " Who is his cell mate? " the warden asked of a 
 guard. 
 
 " Number 60,108," was the reply. 
 
 " And he didn't know a thing about it," grunted 
 Bill surlily. " I did that job at night when he was 
 asleep and kept the stuff hidden in my mattress. 
 You can see where the top of the mattress is 
 ripped open." 
 
 "Getting ready to attempt an escape, eh?" 
 asked the warden. 
 
 Bill nodded. " I'd have been out by now but 
 for that milksop in my cell," he blurted. " He's 
 one of these guys who says his prayers every 
 night. I was afraid he would tell on me and so 
 I never let him in on it." 
 
 Bill had saved his friend and with no mean
 
 106 THE QUARRY 
 
 sacrifice. The star and the disc on Montgomery's 
 sleeve had helped in the free acceptance of Bill's 
 story. 
 
 A guard found the scissors and bodkin in an- 
 other convict's cell, and ranks were broken and 
 the men permitted to finish the wash-up for supper. 
 
 Bill was sent back to his cell and Montgomery 
 followed him. 
 
 "Why did you do it, Bill?" asked the young 
 man. " Why did you do it? The penalty is 
 fifteen marks for every month of your minimum 
 sentence. That means twenty-seven hundred 
 marks against you and there is an added day of 
 sentence for every three marks." 
 
 Bill had calmly taken nine hundred days, 
 nearly two and a half years, added time, to help 
 his companion. But he had no time to talk over 
 the matter now. He addressed Montgomery 
 brusquely. The minutes were precious. 
 
 " The suit's gone," he said. " You've got to 
 beat it for the Hackensack meadows by freight 
 over on the other shore. Leave the freight at 
 Homestead and make for the marsh grass. It 
 is six feet and more high. They can't track you 
 through it. You'll find little hummocks of hard
 
 THE QUARRY 107 
 
 ground above highwater mark. Look sharp and 
 find one with a puddle of rain water on it if you 
 can. Be careful about quicksands. There's two 
 quicksand holes northwest of Homestead. Go 
 in the other direction." 
 
 The old burglar talked rapidly and without 
 moving his lips. 'The words came in a whispered 
 streak to the ears of Montgomery. Third term 
 men became ventriloquial and the rule of silence 
 falls beneath their skill. 
 
 He reached under Montgomery's mattress and 
 pulled out a felt hat. " Slip this under your 
 blouse," he said. 
 
 He flipped over his own mattress and his quick 
 fingers tore open the under sheet of ticking. He 
 found five ten-dollar bills, sewed together as one. 
 
 " Put this in your kick," he told Montgomery. 
 " You will need it. Don't ask any questions. 
 There ain't time. I had it slipped in from the 
 outside." 
 
 In two minutes more they would say good-by 
 to each other if the escape was successfully man- 
 aged. 
 
 " Don't forget the old man, Kid," Bill said 
 solemnly. " I don't know how much it counts,
 
 108 THE QUARRY 
 
 but you might think of me at night when you 
 say your prayers. If you make out all right, get 
 a personal in the Herald and sign it ' Kid.' The 
 Butcher is on his good behavior and gets the 
 paper regular. He'll watch for it and let me know. 
 Any kind of code you make up we can dope out in 
 here." 
 
 The bell sounded for mess formation. 
 
 Bill held out his hand and Montgomery took it 
 in both of his.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE open head of the oblong box in the 
 machine shop lay between the legs of the 
 table at which convict Number 60,108 
 made his record of machinery received and machin- 
 ery shipped from the prison. The box was ad- 
 dressed in heavily inked letters: " Sampson 
 Machine Works, New York City, via New York 
 Central." Apparently it was ready to be taken 
 from the prison. 
 
 Four men were staggering out of the shop with 
 a crated machine when the convict at the desk 
 asked how many more pieces their wagon could 
 take. 
 
 " One more," replied one of the men. 
 
 " Can you handle this long box to finish the 
 load?" 
 
 " It's just right to finish up with for the night." 
 
 " All right. Take it out when you return. I 
 may be out of the shop. It is time to turn in. 
 I will put it down on my list as having been sent."
 
 110 THE QUARRY 
 
 The convict foreman turned and went to the 
 little office of the superintendent of machine shops. 
 
 "The last load for the night will be off in a 
 few moments, sir? " he informed that official. 
 
 " Very good. As soon as the last piece goes, 
 you may report to your tier guard and turn in," 
 the superintendent replied. 
 
 Number 60,108 returned to his shop. He or- 
 dered two fellow convicts who had been assisting 
 him to report for good night to the superintendent. 
 He saw them obey his instructions and leave the 
 building. 
 
 Montgomery was alone in the room and at his 
 desk. He pretended to be writing in his record 
 of shipments. At his feet lay the oblong box with 
 the trick end under the desk and ready to be 
 snapped in place. 
 
 Outside he heard the clatter of the heavy shoes 
 of the truckmen approaching. He bowed over 
 his desk for a moment and then disappeared. 
 A gray form wriggled feet first into the box and the 
 end under the desk suddenly closed with a slight 
 click. 
 
 The truckmen entered, shouldered the coffin- 
 like case and, finding it lighter than they had ex-
 
 THE QUARRY 111 
 
 pected, hastened their steps that they might 
 quickly finish with their job for the night. They 
 passed out of the shop to the quadrangle, heaved 
 the box to the rear of the loaded truck and roped 
 it on. 
 
 It was nearly eleven o'clock and the stars were 
 obscured by clouds. Arc lights made the quad- 
 rangle as bright as day and illumined the high 
 walls and every nook and corner. Sentries in 
 their little octagonal boxes stood with their rifles 
 in hand, keeping a sharp lookout. 
 
 A team of powerful horses tugged at the burden 
 and the load of machinery was started out. At 
 the gate the head truckman told the guard that his 
 job was done for the night and gave him a slip 
 containing the list of pieces entrusted to him to 
 deliver at the Ossining freight station. 
 
 In another half-minute convict Number 60,108 
 was outside of the walls of Sing Sing. He braced 
 himself with his knees and elbows when the 
 truck jolted over rough places in the road. 
 
 Bill had told him that he would find a path down 
 the cliff a half mile north of the prison. It would 
 lead to the railroad tracks. He was to find it and 
 get away from main roads.
 
 112 THE QUARRY 
 
 Montgomery counted on one hour before his 
 tier guard would demand an explanation of his 
 absence at the machine shop and then give the 
 alarm. 
 
 He estimated the distance by the speed of the 
 horses and at the proper moment released the end 
 of the box. He drew himself forth and tumbled, 
 with a sidewise twist, to the soft, earth road. 
 On hands and knees he scrambled into the 
 shadow of some bushes and took his bearings. 
 His instructions from Bill were to look for a house 
 with a double porch and a high-peaked roof. Op- 
 posite this house he would find the path down the 
 cliff to the tracks. His estimate of the distance 
 traveled by the truck proved a good one and he 
 found no trouble in locating the house and then 
 the path. 
 
 The road was deserted and the houses all dark. 
 The only sound was the creaking of the load of 
 machinery, which rapidly became fainter and 
 fainter. He plunged down the path and, at the 
 bottom of the cliff, turned and ran to the south 
 through the little tunnel under the prison. 
 
 There were six miles to cover to Tarrytown, then 
 three and a half miles across the Hudson to Nyack
 
 THE QUARRY 113 
 
 and then a mile and a half westward to the West 
 Shore Railroad, which would take him to the 
 meadows of Newark Bay. 
 
 Bill's inside information was that at West 
 Nyack he would get an express freight at four in 
 the morning. It would not stop until Homestead 
 was reached; there some of the cars would be 
 shunted to the Erie tracks, and he would be 
 able to slip into the tall marsh grass just as day 
 was breaking. 
 
 Montgomery had five hours in which to make 
 the schedule outlined for him by his burglar 
 friend. He took the cinder path between the 
 tracks, brought his clenched hands to his chest 
 and started to run in a swinging stride, his mouth 
 closed and his head thrown back. 
 
 It was not easy going, for the prison brogans are 
 made of heavy, stiff leather, with soles that would 
 sink a diver to his task below the sea. His heels 
 and toes were badly blistered by the end of his 
 second mile and he was compelled to stop and 
 rest. He did not dare lie down for fear that fatigue 
 might close his eyes in sleep. 
 
 When his feet had cooled and his breathing had 
 become normal again, he climbed to the top of a
 
 114 THE QUARRY 
 
 great rock and looked toward Ossining. In the 
 velvet distance he could see the prison lights high 
 on the cliff above the village station. Below 
 the cliff he saw tiny lights twinkling and at first 
 he thought them fireflies. His years within prison 
 walls had destroyed his sense of perspective. He 
 studied these will-o'-the-wisp lights and soon real- 
 ized that they were from lanterns swinging in 
 the hands of men hunting him. 
 
 The fugitive turned, threw back his head and 
 began to run. He increased his speed gradually 
 until he struck a gait he thought he could hold 
 for an hour without rupturing a blood vessel. 
 The torn skin on his heels fell away under the 
 chafing of the heavy leather and exposed the quick 
 of his flesh. Blood began to fill his shoes but as 
 he ran he kept telling himself that he could well 
 afford to suffer ten times the torture if he reached 
 his goal his liberty. 
 
 He felt as if he had discarded his number and 
 was once again James Montgomery, a human 
 being, out in the open, the ground beneath him 
 and the river running beside him. It was early 
 summer and the cool night air was sweet with 
 the fragrance of breathing flowers and fields.
 
 THE QUARRY 115 
 
 His good lungs drew in the balsamic air and 
 pumped oxygen into his blood. But for the ever 
 increasing pain of his torn feet, he felt that he 
 could run more than the full Marathon course 
 with ease. 
 
 Ahead of him showed the northern boundary 
 lights of Tarrytown. Once he looked over his 
 shoulder as he ran but he could 'not see the lan- 
 terns of the hunters. He was beginning to gather 
 stronger hope of ultimate escape when the will-o'- 
 the-wisp lights showed ahead of him. He stopped 
 short in his tracks. 
 
 It was evident that the Sing Sing officials had 
 telephoned the police of surrounding villages. To 
 his left was the open country, but with villages 
 every three or four miles and from each village, 
 perhaps, a squad of men with lanterns, forming 
 a circle to close in on him. 
 
 To his right was the river and the country be- 
 yond, a country he knew as only one could know 
 who roamed it in boyhood. He lost no time in 
 deciding. 
 
 Montgomery ran to the river's edge and stripped 
 off the heavy prison shoes. He peeled off the 
 blood-soaked socks and from one of them took
 
 116 THE QUARRY 
 
 the money Bill had given him; this he tied in 
 an end of his shirt under the blouse. Then he 
 hid the shoes and socks under a pile of rubbish and 
 waded out into the river. 
 
 The clouds still covered the stars overhead and 
 the river was black as a river of ink. As the water 
 reached his armpits, he threw himself forward and 
 began to swim with a quiet, underhand stroke 
 for the other shore. The tide was flowing out 
 and he began to cross diagonally, to get the full 
 advantage of the current. He figured that, with a 
 steady stroke, he would land just south of Nyack 
 and in the great, friendly shadow of Grand View. 
 
 He used a bright light high above the river's 
 edge on the Palisades for making this course. 
 After two miles he would reach the shallows, 
 where he would find the poles of fishing nets 
 spread by the rivermen. There he could stop and 
 rest. He had swum the river as a boy for the fun 
 of it; as a man and with a man's strength he was 
 swimming it now for life. 
 
 There was not a craft to be seen on the river. 
 It would be daybreak before the night line steam- 
 ship from Albany would pass between Tarrytown 
 and Nyack.
 
 THE QUARRY 117 
 
 Reaching the middle of the river, he changed his 
 stroke. Until now he had kept his shoulders under 
 water, swimming underhanded. Now he used 
 the fast and powerful overhand swing of the arms, 
 resting himself from time to time by rolling on 
 either side and using the easier side stroke. 
 
 He reached the net poles and paused to get his 
 wind, but he was off again in a moment and soon 
 made the shore. The tide was well out and he found 
 refuge under the landing pier of a boat club. He 
 uttered a prayer of gratitude as he pulled off his 
 heavy blouse and trousers and wrung them free 
 of water. He was without shoes but he did not 
 fear rocks and shards in his path to liberty and 
 life and happiness. He would have gone barefoot 
 through coals of fire to the goal he had set for 
 himself. Then, too, he knew the soft country lanes 
 and field paths leading from Nyack to West Nyack. 
 
 A village clock struck the hour of two. 
 
 Montgomery's heart leaped within him. He 
 could make the fast freight, a mile and a half 
 across country, easily. He started from the river 
 at a fast walk.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WEN the fast freight on the West Shore, 
 rom West Nyack to Jersey City, stopped 
 with a grunt and a clangor of iron coup- 
 lings at Homestead, a creature that seemed more 
 a reptile than a human crawled from a brake- 
 beam under the last car, wriggled from the cross- 
 ties and disappeared in the marsh. 
 
 The soft mud closed over each track of hand 
 and knee and the tall grass and cattails merely 
 quivered for a moment and then fell back in 
 position to hide with a friendly curtain the hunted 
 thing that had sought sanctuary there. 
 
 A stiff breeze from the sea had swept the horizon 
 clear of clouds and had lifted the mist that de- 
 scends at night upon the moorlands near the 
 harbor of New York. Soft gray, with a faint dif- 
 fusion of opal tints, lighted the sky and gradually 
 paled into death the light of the morning star. 
 The first chirps of the blackbirds, robins and spar-
 
 A creature that seemed more a reptile than a human wriggled 
 from the cross-ties and disappeared in the marsh. 
 
 Page 1 1 8.
 
 THE QUARRY 119 
 
 rows announced with the glow above that the 
 day was beginning. A catbird, the mocker of 
 the Northern latitudes, began to try out his voice, 
 imitating the warblers with roulades of throaty 
 and rich notes. The pink blossoms of the marsh- 
 mallows nodded in the breeze sweeping saltily from 
 the sea and the dried sedge top made a pleasant, 
 whispering sound. 
 
 Hidden in the widestretching fen, Montgomery 
 saw and revelled in the joy of the first sunrise 
 he had looked upon in five years, made glad 
 his starved soul with the sound of the birds 
 stirring from their nests and in his heart echoed 
 a Te Deum for his deliverance from prison 
 walls. 
 
 The long ride on the brakebeam had covered 
 his face, hands and clothes with dust and grease 
 until he seemed a part of the bog in which he had 
 sought shelter from the hounds at his heels. 
 Moving cautiously, and always fearful of a pit 
 of quicksand, he sought one of the high and dry 
 hummocks Bill had told him of. 
 
 He needed sleep and rest, for he had worn out 
 his feet and legs in the race from Sing Sing to 
 North Tarrytown and his arms in the swimming
 
 120 THE QUARRY 
 
 of the river. Clinging under a freight car for the 
 rest of the flight had racked every nerve and muscle 
 in him. 
 
 Montgomery came to a little estuary of the 
 bay piercing the marsh grass. On the other side 
 he could see, as he peered through the rent he 
 made in the green wall, a rise in the marsh level 
 and, topping it, a cluster of wild flowers. He 
 recognized it as his refuge against high tide and a 
 place where he could lie down and sleep. 
 
 With a few strokes the escaped convict made the 
 other side and gained the hummock. He found 
 it dry and littered with an accumulation of with- 
 ered and fallen stalks and leaves. No bed ever 
 felt so soft and alluring to a worn creature. He 
 threw himself down upon the litter, shielded his 
 grimy face with an arm and was asleep in a 
 moment. 
 
 The sun at meridian beat down in a straight 
 shaft upon the sleeping man and gnats and mos- 
 quitoes fed upon him, but still he slept. Only semi- 
 conscious of the act, he pulled his gray blouse 
 over his head and face and stuck his hands under 
 it when the torture became too great. The winged 
 pests preyed upon his torn feet and in his sleep
 
 THE QUARRY 121 
 
 he protected them by burrowing with his toes in 
 the litter of his tiny island refuge. 
 
 In the afternoon the breeze from the sea in- 
 creased to a gale as the tide reached the flood and 
 the skies became overcast. A great clap of thunder 
 awakened the sleeping fugitive. He put his hands 
 to his face, swollen with the bites of the insects, 
 then looked about him with half closed eyes and 
 remembered. The water was lapping at his feet. 
 
 The wind had sent mosquitoes and gnats to 
 cover. He stripped and washed himself clean. 
 A glance at the heavens told him that soon the 
 rain would fall. He had been twenty-four hours 
 without a drink of water or a particle of food. 
 Bill had warned him about the tortures of thirst. 
 He placed the felt hat given him by the burglar 
 so that it would catch the rain; he followed Bill's 
 advice and of his blouse made a little cloth reser- 
 voir supported on sticks of driftwood. The fall 
 of the rain on his naked body and upturned face 
 would reduce the fever set up by the stings of the 
 pests, and he would hoard as best he could what 
 rain water he could catch in blouse and hat. 
 
 Montgomery stood on the highest point of his 
 little place of refuge and found that his eyes topped
 
 122 THE QUARRY 
 
 the marshline. He broke several branches of 
 wild flowers and held them so that his head would 
 be concealed as he made his observations. 
 
 To the north he saw a weatherbeaten shack, 
 perhaps the rendezvous of Jersey fishermen or an 
 abandoned duck hunters' club. It was distant less 
 than a hundred yards and he determined to visit 
 it after nightfall in the search for food and clothes. 
 Just beyond it was a trolley trestle and he saw a 
 car whizzing across it at full speed. 
 
 The rain began to fall and the first splashing of 
 it against his body was as a flow of ointment to the 
 sores of Job after a flood of stale words from his 
 comforter Bildad, the Shuhite. 
 
 He remembered that Bill Hawkins had warned 
 him against dry weather in the meadows. The 
 county constabulary had set fire to the parched 
 grass to smoke out escaped convicts in times gone 
 by and there had been several poor devils baked 
 alive. The rain would save him from this dreadful 
 menace. He felt that God was good and caring 
 for him again. His profound faith in Him was 
 made sweeter for this mercy. 
 
 Up from the distant ocean the clouds rolled in 
 great, black folds, ripped raggedly in white
 
 THE QUARRY 123 
 
 streaks, as the lightning played and as the thunder- 
 ous voices proclaimed that a hot sky and a smiling 
 sea had brought forth a summer's storm. 
 
 Holding his shield of wild flowers about his 
 head, Montgomery gazed upon the spectacle, 
 standing naked to the fall of the rain, fearless of 
 the lightning seams in the troubled curtain above 
 him, reverent of nature as he was of nature's 
 Master, and fearful only that the blouse with the 
 white disc and star beside him might upset and 
 spill the precious drops of fresh water. 
 
 The gale increased as the afternoon waned, and 
 as his cloth reservoir filled, he squatted beside it, 
 making fast the sticks that held the corners and 
 carefully guarding it. Twice he leaned over and 
 drank thirstily when it filled and began to over- 
 flow. 
 
 He was groping for more sticks of driftwood to 
 strengthen his reservoir supports when a white 
 object in the marsh grass struck his eye. 
 
 In the gloaming of a stormy twilight he could 
 not make out just what the object was and he 
 parted the grass and leaned nearer. He recoiled 
 with a little cry of horror. He had looked upon 
 the face of a drowned man!
 
 124 THE QUARRY 
 
 With the storm above him and beating upon 
 him and with the marsh stretching around him, 
 a vision of death had come to pay him a visit. 
 
 For several minutes he stood naked and shiver- 
 ing, awed but not frightened. Then he parted 
 the grass again, reached down and dragged to his 
 little island the abandoned tenement of a man's 
 soul. 
 
 From the yearly average of more than three 
 hundred bodies that are taken from the waters 
 about New York City, this one poor relic of a 
 human existence had been swept by the tide and 
 the wind to the feet of a living creature who had 
 escaped from a tomb. 
 
 James Montgomery knelt beside the body and 
 prayed. And as he prayed, there came to his mind 
 the thought that none other than his Merciful 
 Father in Heaven had sent to him this outcast 
 of life. He had brought with him an offering of a 
 suit of clothes. 
 
 In the pitch black of a night of storm, the fugi- 
 tive put upon the dead man the blouse with the 
 white disc and white star of honor and the baggy 
 trousers. 
 
 In the soaked and muddied suit of working
 
 THE QUARRY 125 
 
 clothes he took in exchange, Montgomery knelt 
 for a final prayer in parting with the dead and 
 then disappeared in the marsh grass toward the 
 nearest shore lights.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AS the men directing the bands of hunters 
 reported by telephone from hour to hour 
 that no trace of the escaped convict had 
 been found, the warden of Sing Sing extended his 
 zone of search. 
 
 Police headquarters in New York City was 
 notified by telephone and a request made that 
 men be sent to watch all incoming trains, freight 
 and passenger. 
 
 It was a case for the plain-clothes men and 
 Inspector Ranscombe was reached by telephone 
 at his home. 
 
 " What is the name of the convict and how long 
 a term did he have? " asked the inspector over the 
 wire. 
 
 " James Montgomery and he was in for life for 
 murder," the headquarters lieutenant informed 
 him. 
 
 " Where was he sent up from? " 
 
 " From New York."
 
 THE QUARRY 127 
 
 " One of our cases? " 
 
 " Yes, sir; he was convicted of second degree 
 murder and sent up five years ago." 
 
 " Yes, I recall now. It was the West End 
 National Bank case. Mike Kearney handled it, 
 didn't he?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Well, shoot the men from the Harlem and 
 Bronx stations to the railroad yards and tell 'em 
 to round up all the hoboes and suspicious char- 
 acters they run into. Let Kearney sleep until 
 seven in the morning and then get word to him. 
 Tell him his man Montgomery is out and that 
 he is to handle the matter if he is not recaptured 
 by that time." 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 Within fifteen minutes all the available detect- 
 ives from the Harlem and Bronx precincts were 
 busy finding and arresting all incoming tramps 
 and wayfarers of the night. 
 
 At seven o'clock in the morning Sing Sing re- 
 ported failure to recapture the escaped " lifer " 
 and the Oak Street police station was instructed 
 over the telephone to send a man to the little flat 
 in Oliver Street and rout out Mike Kearney.
 
 128 THE QUARRY 
 
 Mrs. Kearney, who was about to start for 
 early mass, dropped her beads and her " Key of 
 Heaven " and hurriedly prepared a breakfast 
 as her son dressed. He was for hurrying to head- 
 quarters without a second's delay but she made 
 him swallow a cup of coffee and three soft-boiled 
 eggs first. 
 
 " Half the time you don't stop to eat when 
 ye're on a case," she said reproachfully. " If 
 one of me own people was in trouble I wouldn't 
 be wantin' the likes of me son Mike to start after 
 him." 
 
 Kearney grunted, felt at his hip to be sure that 
 his gun was there, pulled his hat over his eyes 
 and departed. 
 
 At headquarters the lieutenant in charge of 
 the detective bureau informed him that there 
 was no reason for haste. 
 
 " The inspector just telephoned for you to wait 
 here until he comes," he told Kearney. " Jim 
 Montgomery, the yegg you sent up for life, es- 
 caped from Sing Sing last night and " 
 
 " What? " gasped Kearney. 
 
 The tone of his voice was that of a man who had 
 been deeply aggrieved.
 
 THE QUARRY 129 
 
 " Yes," said the lieutenant. " He's got a good 
 eight hours' start of those Sing Sing boneheads. 
 We've had men at all the railroad yards since mid- 
 night but if he came this way they all missed him." 
 
 " How'd he get out? " 
 
 " Here's a morning paper. It will give you all 
 the details." 
 
 Kearney took the paper and went to the little 
 waiting-room for detectives, stretched himself in 
 a chair with his feet on the table and read a full 
 account of the escape. 
 
 He reread the story carefully and then went 
 to the identification bureau and secured all the 
 records in the case of the Police against James 
 Montgomery. He thoroughly refreshed his mem- 
 ory on every point in the case and studied the pho- 
 tographs from the Rogues' Gallery until he felt 
 that he would recognize his man again the moment 
 he laid eyes on him. The inspector arrived at 
 nine o'clock and Kearney was summoned be- 
 fore him immediately. 
 
 The passing of five years had made little differ- 
 ence in the appearance of either man. Rans- 
 combe's bristly mustache was a bit whiter and 
 his shaggy head of iron gray hair perhaps some-
 
 130 THE QUARRY 
 
 what thinner, but the same suggestion of latent 
 ferocity was in his eyes and in the set of his jaw. 
 
 Kearney's homely features were unchanged. 
 He was still the type of slow and sure-going man- 
 hunter, stolid, keen-eyed, but without a trace 
 of human emotion. 
 
 " Well, Mike," hailed the inspector, " what 
 do you think of the departure of Mr. Mont- 
 gomery? " 
 
 Kearney shrugged his shoulders. " He ain't 
 the first yegg to get out," he said. " They 
 got plenty of money and don't mind spending 
 it. The papers say he was the best machinist 
 in the prison. I guess he'll be using electric 
 drills on safes around the country." 
 
 " He was only a boy as I remember him," 
 suggested the inspector, " and somehow he im- 
 pressed me as truthful, although the evidence 
 convicted him of the crime." 
 
 " There's lots of boy wonders among the crooks," 
 replied the detective. " There's the Boston 
 Kid, Little Jimmie Moran, Baby Bernstein and 
 a whole raft of them that's just out of short pants." 
 
 " Well, everything is pretty quiet now," said 
 the inspector, " and we might just as well spend
 
 THE QUARRY 131 
 
 a little time on the Montgomery escape. Do you 
 think you can find him? " 
 
 " I gotta good start on the job," Kearney 
 replied. " We got his record. He can grow 
 whiskers, change his name and hide where he 
 wants to, but if I ever get the print of one of his 
 fingers and check up on it, he comes back to 
 Mulberry Street with me." 
 
 Kearney's voice quavered with eagerness as he 
 spoke. He was hungry for the job and in his 
 soul he was howling to be unleashed that he might 
 start for the game before the trail became cold. 
 
 The inspector began to open his mail. As he 
 sorted the personal from the official letters he 
 said, without lifting his eyes: " Go get him." 
 
 Kearney slipped from the room.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 IT is only a part of an hour's journey from the 
 Grand Central Station in Forty-second Street 
 to the prison village of Ossining. 
 
 Detective Lieutenant Michael Kearney pre- 
 sented himself in the warden's office at Sing Sing 
 at ten-thirty o'clock the morning after the escape 
 of Convict Number 60,108. 
 
 He showed his authority to the warden and 
 said abruptly: " We put him in here for life and 
 we want to get him back here and keep him here." 
 
 The warden flushed but controlled his anger. 
 
 " You mean that you're going to help us try 
 to recapture this escaped convict," he said coldly. 
 
 " Yuh," grunted Kearney. " You got my 
 number." 
 
 The detective felt a personal animosity to the 
 warden for having let his quarry escape from the 
 pit into which the police had hurled him. 
 
 :< Well, this isn't exactly the place to hunt for 
 Number 60,108," the warden said, with a grim
 
 THE QUARRY 133 
 
 smile. " He left here about eleven o'clock last 
 night." 
 
 " Did he have any help from the outside? " 
 asked Kearney. 
 
 " None that we know of. He managed to slip 
 out in a box with a lot of machinery." 
 
 " Did he get any inside help? " 
 
 " None that we know of." 
 
 " Did he have a cell mate? " 
 
 " He did." 
 
 " I'd like to talk with him." 
 
 The warden pressed a button and instructed a 
 deputy to bring Convict Number 60,110 before 
 him. 
 
 In a few minutes the great hulk of Bill Hawkins 
 showed in the door of the office. 
 
 Kearney had taken a chair with his back to a 
 window filled with sunlight. 
 
 The old convict saw him but could not make 
 out his features because of the glare in his eyes. 
 He sensed the human bloodhound in him, how- 
 ever. He recognized the big feet and droopy 
 form of the plain-clothes man and was fully 
 acquainted with the old trick of sitting with the 
 back to the light.
 
 134 THE QUARRY 
 
 Bill nodded to the warden. 
 
 " Hello, Bill," was Kearney's greeting. The 
 detective had recognized him as an old offender. 
 
 Bill turned to him and walked so that the light 
 would not be directly in his eyes. From a bet- 
 ter position he studied the detective's face a 
 moment. 
 
 He did not reply to the greeting although he, 
 in turn, recognized Kearney. He turned to the 
 warden and asked: "Did you want anything 
 of me, sir? " 
 
 " Yes; the detective here would like to ask you 
 some questions," replied the warden. 
 
 " How much more time you got to serve, Bill? " 
 asked Kearney. 
 
 " Ten years and then some," was the answer. 
 
 " Marks against you ? " 
 
 The old burglar hesitated. 
 
 " He ain't got no stripes on his arm, warden," 
 said Kearney. " Would you mind finding out 
 what the prison charges were against him? " 
 
 The deputy warden furnished the record. It 
 showed that on his own confession he had been 
 found guilty of planning to escape and had suffered 
 the addition of more than two years' extra time
 
 THE QUARRY 135 
 
 to his sentence. A suit of clothes had been found 
 in his cell, the report of the conviction related. 
 
 " You got the suit still, warden? " asked 
 Kearney. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The deputy was sent for it. 
 
 " Try on the coat, Bill," ordered Kearney, 
 when the clothes were brought him. 
 
 "What's all this for?" demanded Bill, un- 
 easily and savagely. 
 
 " Pull off your blouse and try it on," insisted 
 the detective. 
 
 Bill turned to the warden. " I gotta do what 
 this bull says? " he asked. 
 
 " Take it easy, old man," the warden said 
 soothingly. " Try on the coat." 
 
 Bill, a smothered volcano of anathemae, did 
 as he was instructed. 
 
 The sleeves of the coat reached barely beyond 
 the elbows of his gorilla-like arms and so tight 
 was it that buttons and buttonholes were a good 
 six inches apart. 
 
 " You didn't expect to escape in that? " asked 
 Kearney. 
 
 The convict ignored the question.
 
 136 THE QUARRY 
 
 " You made it for your cellmate who did es- 
 cape," the detective said sharply. 
 
 " What are you kicking about? " demanded 
 Bill, his sunken eyes flashing hate as he spoke. 
 " Ain't I taking the extra time? " 
 
 " But you don't have to, Bill," coaxed Kearney. 
 " You can get that time taken off and then some 
 of the original sentence too if you will help us out." 
 The bribe was offered. 
 
 Bill sneered and looked to the warden as if in 
 supplication that Kearney be kicked from the 
 room. 
 
 The warden had no sympathy with the class 
 of work his detective visitor was indulging in. 
 He made a motion with his hand to the convict, 
 a sign to him to control himself. 
 
 " Nothing doing," said the old burglar to 
 Kearney. 
 
 " You've served a good part of your sentence," 
 suggested Kearney. " Now suppose I get a 
 pardon or a parole through for you, will you help ? " 
 
 " I don't know nothing," Bill choked out. 
 
 Kearney sat quietly for a moment as if deciding 
 on the size and quality of his next bribe offering. 
 
 " Bill," began Kearney slowly.
 
 THE QUARRY 137 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I saw your old girl one night last week 
 Rosie." 
 
 The heavy jaw of Hawkins dropped and he 
 felt as if the talons of a great eagle had gripped his 
 heart. 
 
 " She was pretty hard up," added Kearney. 
 " She had changed from Broadway to Third 
 Avenue and then to the Bowery." 
 
 Bill's tongue was protruding over his yellow 
 lower teeth. Rage was choking him. 
 
 " She was a pretty girl when I was a kid on the 
 cops," continued Kearney. 
 
 A coughing sound, such as a tiger makes when 
 he swallows a sharp sliver of a bone, came from 
 the convict. A cloud swept by the warden in his 
 chair and fell upon Detective Lieutenant Michael 
 Kearney of police headquarters, New York. 
 
 For a moment, Mike Kearney was close to 
 death, but rage had blinded the convict and he 
 fumbled in his reach for the throat of his enemy. 
 A dozen prison attendants were in the room at the 
 sound of the crash and Bill Hawkins was dragged 
 from his prey in time. 
 
 The detective struggled to his feet and straight-
 
 138 THE QUARRY 
 
 ened out his rumpled clothes. When he got his 
 wind he turned to the convict and said : " I guess 
 that means a little more time for you, Bill." 
 
 The warden had had enough of the practice 
 of the third degree in his office. 
 
 " One minute," he said to the attendants hold- 
 ing Bill. He turned to Kearney. " Have you 
 finished?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He turned to the livid old prisoner before him. 
 
 " Bill, was this woman he told you about your 
 wife?" 
 
 " She's my wife," he panted. " She's got the 
 certificate to prove it. If she's on the Bowery, 
 it's because she didn't have nowhere else to go." 
 
 There were no sobs left in Bill, Number 60, no. 
 His eyes had long been wrung of the last tear. 
 God had made him and man had driven him to a 
 corner where his only solace was the curse of the 
 anarch. 
 
 " Go back to your cell, Bill," said the warden. 
 
 As the convict was taken away the warden 
 turned to his desk and started to read the reports 
 of his deputies. 
 
 Kearney took the hint and with a grim smile
 
 THE QUARRY 139 
 
 on his homely face left the office. Not a bit dis- 
 couraged, he caught the next down train, left it 
 at Tarrytown and crossed on the ferry to Nyack. 
 He would try Montgomery's own people in the 
 hope of breaking out a good lead to his quarry.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT KEARNEY, 
 after several days in Nyack, returned to 
 New York, and from the old gray build- 
 ing in Mulberry Street put into operation all 
 the resources of the finest and most inexorable 
 police system in the world, to the end that James 
 Montgomery might be taken back to a Sing Sing 
 cell to end his life there. 
 
 Working on the trite axiom that chickens come 
 home to roost, Kearney had looked up every friend 
 of the Montgomery family in Nyack and the 
 country around. He had impressed the town 
 police with the necessity for alertness and patience 
 in aiding in the recapture of the escaped convict. 
 
 Montgomery would come back some day to 
 the place of his birth. When the exile years grew 
 stale and profitless, the heimweh would get him 
 and he would succumb to it. 
 
 He arranged with the postal department to put
 
 THE QUARRY 141 
 
 a watch on all letters sent to the immediate friends 
 of his quarry and his dead and buried mother. 
 Tantalizingly fond thoughts of home, of parents, 
 of old sweethearts, of beloved friends or of scenes 
 sweetly and deeply placed in memory, have 
 brought into the waiting and strong net of the 
 police more than half of the prisoners taken. 
 
 All this carefully attended to, Kearney had the 
 printer of the police department spread on his 
 forms photographic plates showing Montgomery's 
 face in profile and in full. A reward of one thou- 
 sand dollars for information leading to his re- 
 capture was announced in black type above the 
 pictures; below was given a minute description 
 of the convict, taken from the police records. These 
 circulars were printed and sent to every police 
 center in every city and town in the country. It 
 was a general alarm to every bluecoat and plain- 
 clothes man in the United States to aid in starting 
 up the game from cover. 
 
 It was not exciting detective work but Kearney 
 went at it as if his whole career depended on its 
 successful accomplishment. With the aid of a 
 stenographer and a mimeograph he sent special 
 letters to the heads of all big firms employing
 
 142 THE QUARRY 
 
 machinists. This narrowed the search to a con- 
 siderable extent. 
 
 While this work was under way, Kearney gave 
 the announcement of the reward to the news- 
 papers. Every money-hungry man and woman in 
 the country would keep his or her eyes open for a 
 chance to pick the fugitive from the crowd. 
 
 Montgomery, in flight, soon learned of the 
 spreading of the net from Mulberry Street. After 
 leaving the meadows, he managed to find a hiding 
 place in a freight car. He traveled all night and 
 with morning dropped off on the outskirts of a 
 little New Jersey village. He remained in the 
 woods all day, determined that the good start, 
 so providentially given him, should not be lost 
 through any lack of caution on his part. 
 
 At a brook, he cleaned himself and the muddied 
 garments he wore and at evening of the second day 
 of his escape he felt that he could present himself 
 among his fellows again. During this time he 
 had appeased his hunger with carrots, radishes 
 and turnips from the edge of a truck farm. 
 
 He craved a warming drink and more substan- 
 tial food. After dark, he entered the village and 
 found a lunch wagon near the railroad station.
 
 THE QUARRY 143 
 
 It was while eating in this roadside caravanserai 
 that he overheard two men gossiping about the 
 one thousand dollar reward offered for his recap- 
 ture. 
 
 " It was a daring escape," said the man next 
 him. " The newspapers all wrote it up in fine 
 style and announced that the police would pay 
 the reward. I asked Constable Miklejohn about 
 it and he told me that soon a description and his 
 pictures would be in the hands of every police 
 officer everywhere." 
 
 " A thousand dollars is a lot of money," com- 
 mented the other, cupidously. " When can we 
 see the circular and get a good look at the pic- 
 tures? " 
 
 " The sergeant expects to get some of them by 
 the end of the week." 
 
 Montgomery finished his meal in silence, paid 
 for it from the money he had brought with him 
 from prison and departed. 
 
 He realized that within a week or ten days he 
 would not dare show his face to a police officer 
 in city or village. He would have to get beyond 
 the police net if he could. It would take time for 
 him to grow a beard and change his appearance.
 
 144 THE QUARRY 
 
 He would seek refuge in a part of the country 
 where villages and towns were not so closely 
 crowded together. In some remote corner he 
 could, perhaps, secure for himself some little 
 social standing, just enough to feel as if he had 
 some identity other than that written in the 
 police records. He would willingly work his hands 
 to the quick in any form of honest toil for this 
 boon. 
 
 He secured a time-table at the railroad station 
 and, finding that a Southern express paused there, 
 bought a ticket to Richmond, Virginia. 
 
 On the train he secured copies of the New York 
 newspapers and read the accounts of the search 
 for the escaped convict. In all of the stories refer- 
 ence was made to the fact that he was an expert 
 machinist and he felt that the police would surely 
 look for him among those of his craft. His heart 
 sank within him. How long would it be before 
 he dared go back to the work that he loved and 
 that he was entitled to pursue because of the gift 
 he had to do it fully and because of the years of 
 preparation? His craft was to bring him the 
 means by which some day his name would be 
 cleared so that he would have the inestimable
 
 THE QUARRY 145 
 
 boon of moving without a police shadow at his 
 heels, of living in the open and of doing his best 
 in the struggle of life. 
 
 He coiled up on his seat in a day coach, covered 
 his face with one of the newspapers and fell asleep. 
 When he woke, he was in the South and the pas- 
 sengers for Richmond were crowding the doors of 
 the coach. He felt refreshed and ready to face 
 the day and what came of it. 
 
 In the busy and beautiful Virginia city, Mont- 
 gomery lingered for several days, taking a humble 
 lodging in a cheap boarding-house and gradually 
 equipping himself with a modest wardrobe. He 
 lived with strictest economy, hoarding his scanty 
 supply of money. He yearned for a chance to work 
 with his hands but he feared to show himself in 
 the daytime as yet. There were locomotive works, 
 great tobacco manufacturies, ship yards and other 
 places of industry where a capable machinist 
 might easily find profitable employment but he 
 felt that it was in just such places that the police 
 would seek him. At the end of a week he learned 
 from an afternoon paper that the local police had 
 posted circulars offering a reward for his capture. 
 He saw his own picture on the front page of the
 
 146 THE QUARRY 
 
 paper and under it a close and accurate descrip- 
 tion of himself. He would have to move on. 
 
 He did not return to his lodging-house for the 
 little supply of clothes he had gathered, though 
 he had paid for his room in advance. He knew 
 that every other city in the country would soon 
 be added to the police mesh and he determined to 
 leave the paved streets for the quiet and seclusion 
 of country roads. In a section of the city where 
 the poorer people did their shopping he bought a 
 tin of meat and a box of crackers. He still had 
 twenty-five dollars and he would have spent the 
 most of it for a kit of tools but he did not dare 
 run the risk. He managed to pick up in a small 
 shop a soldering outfit, a light hammer, resin, 
 a spool of wire and a few other essentials for a 
 tinker's outfit. He made a light pack and, as 
 night was falling, found his way out of the city. 
 It was summer and he could sleep in barns and 
 stables or in the open during fair weather. 
 
 As he left the last of the houses behind him, 
 he came to a wide-spreading turnpike. He started 
 southward over this road in search of a haven where 
 he might work under an assumed name and begin 
 life anew.
 
 THE QUARRY 147 
 
 The stars were bright overhead and the evening 
 sweet and balmy. With a good, long stride he 
 increased the distance between him and the city 
 whose homes held the police pictures of himself 
 printed that day. He determined to travel on 
 foot by night and sleep by day until his beard 
 was fully grown.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 INTO the lower bay of New York came welling 
 one of the highest tides of the early summer. 
 The great heave of the ocean crowded the 
 Narrows and rushed into the upper bay, filling 
 the slips on the Jersey City side of the North 
 River to the brim and crowding under to the 
 streets, until the horses stood knee-deep in the 
 brine. Through the narrow Kill von Kull and 
 the Arthur Kull, which separate Staten Island 
 from the mainland, the big tide rushed with the 
 speed of a mill-race into landlocked Newark Bay. 
 Higher and higher the water rose, until the 
 nests of the marshfowl floated away and only the 
 top of the sedge was to be seen. The highest of 
 the hummocks in the meadows was covered and 
 with the turning of the tide their gatherings of 
 spindrift were returned to the waters whence they 
 came. 
 
 The lone, dead visitor that had sought out 
 Montgomery, as he stood naked on his little
 
 THE QUARRY 149 
 
 dune refuge, departed his transient resting place 
 with an escort of dried sedge and broken sticks 
 floating beside him. The return of the tide to its 
 strange, moonmade lair in the vasty deep, taking 
 with it its reclaimed outcasts, was accompanied 
 with a runic chorus from the marsh grass and the 
 piles of wharves and ferry slips. The strange, flute- 
 like song of the outgoing tide increased as the hur- 
 rying waters retreated through the outlets of the 
 bay and the current became stronger. With this 
 funeral music and his sea-motley garland of 
 flotsam, the dead friend of Montgomery floated 
 from Newark Bay through the Kill von Kull to 
 the harbor of New York. 
 
 In the light of a full moon the white disc and 
 star of " honor " showed on the left sleeve of the 
 gray sack covering the torso of the corpse. The 
 big tide had brought Montgomery's lifeless friend 
 to the time of his accounting with the living. 
 This one, mighty flood and ebb of water meant 
 the uncovering of the secrets of swamps, mud cav- 
 erns and the slimy interstices of wreckage. 
 
 For almost every day of the year one human 
 seeks the Lorelei song of the tide that flows under 
 the bridges and over the river tunnels of the waters
 
 150 THE QUARRY 
 
 of New York. Through the winter many are 
 held fastened under the ice, but when the warm 
 weather comes and the rise of the sea is greatest, 
 all come to the surface and drift within the realm 
 of the inquisitive law. 
 
 Among the scores of telephone reports from 
 Harbor Squad A at Pier Number I, North River, 
 during this busy season of the year for the men on 
 the police boats, one read: " Body of convict 
 found floating near Tompkinsville, Staten Island. 
 Sent to morgue." 
 
 This report was made direct to Central Office. 
 Mike Kearney was preparing a new circular to 
 send broadcast and stimulate interest in the re- 
 capture of James Montgomery when the desk 
 lieutenant called him and showed him the slip 
 from Harbor A. He read it carefully and handed 
 it back, then put his unfinished composition 
 in his desk, picked up his weatherbeaten derby 
 and departed headquarters. 
 
 That Board of Health institution, the morgue, 
 rubs elbows with Bellevue Hospital and the 
 Department of Charities and Correction, at the 
 foot of East Twenty-sixth Street, known in the 
 East Side as Misery Lane. Kearney made his
 
 THE QUARRY 151 
 
 way to this highway of sorrow, of competing 
 undertakers offering bargain rates in shrouds, and 
 of free hospital beds for the poor and free slabs 
 for the dead that have died friendless. 
 
 He pushed through the group of haggard mothers 
 seeking the bodies of daughters who had disap- 
 peared in the downward drag of the great city's 
 undertow, and asked the morgue keeper to show 
 him the clothes taken from the body of the con- 
 vict brought in by the harbor police. He ex- 
 amined them and found the white disc and star 
 Montgomery had won by five years of exemplary 
 conduct. This would have assured a careless 
 worker that the body was that of the man who 
 had escaped only recently from Sing Sing. But 
 Kearney was no careless worker. He asked to be 
 shown the body itself and the keeper took him to 
 the damp, circular repository for the city's un- 
 claimed dead. 
 
 The morgue keeper pulled out a box on rollers 
 from its desklike casing and the detective looked 
 at the face of the dead man. Because of the wear 
 of the elements he could make no satisfactory 
 identification of the features. A month had passed 
 since his quarry had slipped him.
 
 152 THE QUARRY 
 
 " Just a minute," he said to the keeper. 
 
 From one of his pockets he produced a little 
 tin box, a sheet of white paper and a brush of 
 camel's hair. The box contained charcoal powder. 
 Kearney reached into the receptacle of the dead 
 body and pulled out the right hand. He dusted 
 the finger tips with the charcoal and pressed them 
 against the paper. With this token as to the 
 identity of the dead man, he returned to police 
 headquarters. 
 
 The Bertillon records gave up the tallying card 
 for the finger prints of James Montgomery. 
 Kearney studied the official record and the print 
 he had made at the morgue, and then smiled 
 grimly. 
 
 The charcoal prints were of the fingers of a 
 different man! 
 
 He went back to his desk and continued the 
 composition of his new circular.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 AFTER the fourth night of lonely journeying 
 beneath the stars and three days hidden 
 in forest nooks, drinking from brooks and 
 eating sparely from his little stock of food, Mont- 
 gomery found that he would have to change his 
 plan of flight. He was now far enough from the 
 capital of the Old Dominion to feel a degree of 
 safety. 
 
 He kept away from the railroad lines and 
 journeyed ever to the south, finding the points of 
 the compass by the sun in the morning and by the 
 pale Northern star during the night. This kept 
 him off from the larger villages with organized 
 police systems and daily newspapers. The farther 
 he got from civilization on a large scale, the deeper 
 became the conviction that he could now afford 
 to risk travel by day. Farmhouses were far apart 
 and for the better share of each day the streets of 
 little hamlets, where the country people did their 
 trading, were deserted. He abandoned living in
 
 154 THE QUARRY 
 
 the woods under shelters knocked up hastily 
 with boughs and leaves and took the road at day- 
 break one morning, his tinker's pack over his 
 shoulder, ready to be dropped and put in use at 
 the first job that offered. 
 
 The whole summer was spent afoot on the 
 highway and it brought to his being that tonic 
 of life which is God-given only, the calm and rest- 
 ful spirit which develops with the frequent con- 
 templation of the changes of the seasons, the com- 
 ing of the dawn and the falling of the dusk on 
 hills and valleys; in the spring the nimbus of the 
 approaching resurrection of trees and flowers and 
 fields; in the summer the burgeoning of the wide 
 and fair countryside with life and in the autumn 
 falling leaf and fading tree. 
 
 If the great city, which sucks from adventuring 
 and plucky youth its glory of red blood and clean 
 minds, had almost annihilated him, as a boy of 
 twenty-one, the country proved kind to him as a 
 man. 
 
 In many a pleasant farmhouse he found wel- 
 come in the evening after a day of usefulness. 
 Frequently the warm bed under the shingles and 
 the hearty meals offered him in return for his
 
 THE QUARRY 155 
 
 labor he felt to be wages as great as any man might 
 desire. He met kindliness and Godliness at every- 
 hand. 
 
 Under his skilful fingers old garden gates took 
 on new life with new hinges and lost their dismal 
 creakings; pumps that had become choked and 
 wheezy responded to the touch of the farmer with 
 ready and bounteous outpourings of sparkling, 
 cold water; implements of husbandry ceased to 
 rattle and do half service; doors, windows, cup- 
 boards and creaking stairs were put in good shape, 
 to the delight of worried housewives, while fas- 
 cinated broods of children clustered about the sun- 
 browned stranger and watched him at his work. 
 
 Sometimes he would find a host who would 
 keep him employed for a week or ten days. On 
 such occasions he came to know the families of 
 the Southern planters and to share with them their 
 simple pleasures and their quiet devotion to 
 old ideals and the daily tasks before them. In 
 every tiny farm settlement he found a little white 
 steeple of a clapboarded church topping the oaks 
 and pines and on Sabbath days he joined these 
 little congregations, offering up his constant prayer 
 of gratitude for his deliverance.
 
 156 THE QUARRY 
 
 The last sickly trace of the prison pallor had 
 left him quickly. A short brown beard and mus- 
 tache had grown to aid the change of his appear- 
 ance. The large brown eyes in the bearded face 
 gave the suggestion of one who had suffered much 
 and who had gained the essence of divinity. 
 
 In every farmhouse he found a Bible, that book 
 which is a library in itself. Being a tinker, a 
 creature of the highways and byways, he could 
 glimpse and cherish the beauties of the poetry 
 written"by Isaiah and Amos and Micah. Because 
 of the inspiration he gained from these old poets 
 of Israel, the loveliness of nature took on added 
 glory. Then, too, he gained access during the 
 long, quiet evenings to other books in the houses 
 where the stranger was made welcome, books 
 that were sweet and old-fashioned, with love and 
 gentleness pervading their every page. With such 
 reading he unconsciously developed intellectually 
 and upon a plane that would surely stamp him in 
 maturer years a gentle man. 
 
 This wholesome, if itinerant, life gradually 
 shaped his character to a wonderfully fine com- 
 bination of saintliness and vigor. The dust and 
 turmoil of a city street again would have made him
 
 THE QUARRY 157 
 
 reel and become faint. The rush and confusion 
 of a crowded habitation of men would have been 
 to him a veritable court for dragons. 
 
 The daughters of men with whom he came in 
 contact in his journeyings were clear-eyed, sweet, 
 old-fashioned girls. Their laughter was as the 
 piccolo music of shadowy streams over pebbles. 
 The sun had daily kissed their cheeks and their 
 hair from babyhood and the bloom upon their 
 lips was sweeter even than the songs they sang at 
 vesper time. 
 
 All womanhood he held sacred and as a memorial 
 to the mother he had cherished. He was as yet 
 to meet the one girl who would so stir him that the 
 sweet pain in his heart would make him think 
 of Jacob lifting his voice and sobbing at the sight 
 of Rachel. 
 
 Where the five years in prison might have 
 dragged him down to a grade of viciousness that 
 would have scarified his soul, he had come forth 
 from the furnace of affliction clean and a strong 
 man. He had done even more. He had so lived 
 in a cell that an outcast of society had asked him 
 to remember him in his prayers. 
 
 Occasionally he would feel that the police net
 
 158 THE QUARRY 
 
 from Mulberry Street was thrown too closely to 
 him. Going into villages for supplies, he would 
 hear about new efforts to recapture him and of 
 new circulars sent out by his hunters. On such 
 occasions he would hasten back to remote roads 
 and farmhouses. 
 
 Would he ever be able to get far enough away 
 from his implacable pursuers to again take up 
 his work with machinery? At night the twinkle 
 of a lantern in the hands of a countryman thread- 
 ing a dark road would bring back to his mind the 
 horror of that moment when he found the will- 
 o'-the-wisp lights ahead of him as well as behind 
 him, as he ran with bleeding feet between Ossining 
 and Tarrytown. 
 
 He had taken the name of John Nelson and 
 had saved every penny that he had earned with 
 his little handful of tools. After making long 
 stops in various farmhouses during the autumn 
 and the first winter of his regained liberty, he 
 found himself on the boundary of Virginia and 
 North Carolina. 
 
 Ahead of him were the great cotton mills of 
 the South, with their myriad workers and with 
 their great masses of the most modern machinery
 
 THE QUARRY 159 
 
 turned out by geniuses in invention. In this great 
 mountain belt of industry he felt that he would 
 find his future work. 
 
 One day he put aside his humble tinker's kit 
 and applied for work in a cotton mill as a machinist. 
 A year had passed since his escape from the prison 
 on the Hudson. He felt that the time was at hand 
 for him to start the work that might some day 
 bring him fortune and the clearing of his good 
 name. 
 
 John Nelson had advanced far beyond the 
 circle of the ordinary man of his craft and he 
 could have pushed rapidly ahead of many of his 
 fellow employees in the first cotton mill where he 
 obtained employment. But he was content with 
 obscurity for awhile yet and he knew that the 
 time would not be wasted, for every hour of it 
 would give him a better grasp of cotton mill work. 
 
 He lived in a mill town that seldom saw the 
 coming of strangers and he made his habitat 
 among the poorer class of employees, preferring 
 to spend his board money as a means of help 
 where it was most needed. He made no intimate 
 friends among the people, concentrating all his 
 effort of mind in the study of mill machinery
 
 160 THE QUARRY 
 
 and in reading works on mechanical engineering, 
 which he borrowed from his superintendent. 
 
 Despite his effort to remain in the background 
 of workers, he was quickly recognized as an expert 
 and was advanced in wages as well as in the im- 
 portance of his tasks. By sheer force of ability 
 he had attained the degree of mechanical engineer 
 and was already at that point of honest attain- 
 ment when at any moment he might be called to 
 strip off his overalls and step to the desk of a ten- 
 thousand-a-year man. 
 
 Nelson did not feel that this first mill was the 
 place for his ultimate effort to reach the top. He 
 had come whence no man knew. He had no 
 past to offer. He could give no reference of any 
 sort as to his life or character. He could never 
 tell truthfully where he had gained the working 
 foundations for the knowledge he possessed. 
 
 He prepared to move on and made his first 
 request for a letter of recommendation, which was 
 gladly given by his superintendent. With this 
 bit of paper in his possession, he had established 
 a past. He had something by which he could 
 identify himself as John Nelson, mechanic. No 
 one would have to take his word only; he could
 
 THE QUARRY 161 
 
 offer this reference. The few kindly words of 
 praise written at his request were more precious 
 to him than silver or gold. 
 
 The garments of a laborer were no longer 
 suitable. He parted with them for clothes of 
 better texture. His old pack was cast aside for- 
 ever, and in its place was a heavy trunk, big 
 enough and strong enough to carry his wardrobe 
 and the books he had begun to buy with his sa- 
 vings. 
 
 He said good-by to his first mill and took the 
 train South, crossing the North Carolina State 
 line into the Piedmont section of South Carolina. 
 
 His objective was the mountain city of Green- 
 ville and the great plant of the Reedy River mills. 
 These mills were situated outside of the city and 
 were famous not only for their superb equipment 
 and product, but also for the administration of 
 their labor and social affairs. They made a com- 
 munity by themselves, a community governed 
 by the president of the company, a humane, 
 wealthy and capable man. Montgomery had 
 every reason to believe that he would be safer 
 employed with the Reedy River Company than 
 he would be elsewhere in the cotton belt.
 
 162 THE QUARRY 
 
 He sought, first of all, cover from his pursuers, 
 A criminal would have had some pleasure in the 
 game of hide and seek after securing such a good 
 start on the hounds of the law. Some, as many 
 have done in the past, would have run big chances 
 and visited old haunts out of pure bravado. But 
 Montgomery, despite his prison experience and 
 his success in eluding those after him, knew nothing 
 of the excitement and thrill of the life of the law- 
 less. The police had fashioned a mock stain of 
 blood for his hands, had added him to the Gallery 
 of Rogues and had cast him into Sing Sing, but 
 all of this had not been sufficient to make him 
 falter in the path of clean and honest living. 
 
 He left the train at Greenville and found it a 
 thriving little city resting in the deep, cool shade 
 of the Blue Ridge mountains. He looked toward 
 the distant giant tumuli; they seemed to him a 
 wall that God had flung up against his pursuers 
 and as a mighty stockade against the evils and 
 miseries of the outside world. 
 
 Through the little city flowed the river after 
 which the mills were named, from its parent 
 stream, the Saluda, to make its pleasant way 
 through the underbills terracing the Piedmont.
 
 THE QUARRY 163 
 
 Peonies and roses, faintly fragrant nasturtiums 
 and honeysuckle made sweet the homes of the 
 dwellers here, while beyond the city's outskirts 
 reared the tall chimneys of the mills, where he 
 felt sure there would be a demand for his skill, 
 his patience and his inventive genius. 
 
 He ordered his baggage sent to the hotel near 
 the station and took a trolley car to the mills. 
 He found the superintendent, Howard Lansing, 
 anxious for just such a man, satisfied with the 
 letter of recommendation, and was employed 
 at high wages immediately. 
 
 Nelson would report for work the next day. 
 He went back to the city to look about for a quiet, 
 comfortable and remote corner that he could call 
 home. His heart was light for the first time since 
 that dreadful day when he left his own village 
 home and journeyed to New York. 
 
 Here, among the mountains, he would make 
 his stand and his fight. Here was the home of 
 John Nelson. 
 
 James Montgomery was dead.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HOWARD LANSING, who had immediate 
 executive charge of the great working 
 force of the Reedy mills, was a master 
 both of man and machinery. At the half cen- 
 tury mark of life, he had come to admire and hold 
 as fine two things: ability and decency. 
 
 These two things struck cameolike to his vision 
 in John Nelson who had applied to him for work, 
 modestly, as a plain machinist. The restiveness 
 which usually accompanies capacity for work and 
 which promises development or creation of genius 
 was absent in the newcomer at the mills. No 
 tangle of a million threads from the bobbins 
 brought an exclamation of disgust from his lips. 
 No solution of any intricate mechanical problem 
 caused him to exult. If there was anything wrong 
 in the carding room, with its almost ceaseless 
 flow of snowlike cotton and its clamor of mighty 
 steel cogs and rollers, he would set about remedying 
 the defect with the same skill and patience that
 
 THE QUARRY 165 
 
 a surgeon would show in a moment of individual, 
 human crisis. 
 
 Nelson was Lansing's kind of a man and the 
 superintendent invited him to come and live at 
 his home. Both men were taciturn, appreciative 
 but withholding their words, as do most men who 
 handle and care for the wonderfully animated 
 sinews of industry, which speak only with their 
 product. And yet each knew in a very short 
 time that there was appreciativeness and kindly 
 feeling in the other. 
 
 Nelson was glad to accept Lansing's offer and 
 transferred his belongings to the superintendent's 
 comfortable home on the curving, red road that 
 runs from Greenville upward toward Paris Moun- 
 tain. The home was spacious, finely placed upon 
 a site which made every window a stall in God's 
 theatre; the flower garden held every blossom 
 of the mountain country and the library was 
 filled with books that were old and worn friends 
 of their studious owner. 
 
 Mrs. Lansing welcomed the stranger, and her 
 little brood of four children soon accepted him as 
 a member of the family. His bedroom windows 
 opened to the blue mountains, which cut him off
 
 166 THE QUARRY 
 
 from the rest of the world. In these surroundings, 
 which gave him almost the full charm of domesti- 
 city, Nelson started his new life with a growing 
 sense of security. He began to feel that it had 
 been ordained for him to suffer in purgatory so 
 that he would better realize the joys of heaven. 
 With his work in the mills and his studies in 
 Lansing's home, the midsummer passed swiftly 
 and the solemn beauty of autumn came over the 
 land. 
 
 One day, inspecting the work of her servants, 
 Mrs. Lansing found pinned upon the wall in Nel- 
 son's bedroom this verse, which he had found in 
 his random reading of the poets: 
 
 Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done; 
 There lies not any troubled thing before, 
 Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, 
 
 For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, 
 All waters as the shore. 
 
 There was no idle moment in the day's calendar 
 of hours and minutes for John Nelson. He worked 
 not for the pay that was given, but the pay was 
 increased from time to time and, monthly, his 
 earnings went to swell a bank account that reached 
 three figures.
 
 THE QUARRY 167 
 
 Two nights of each week the light in his room 
 burned until after midnight. On these nights he 
 labored at his desk on the plans of a device that 
 would mean the saving of thousands of dollars 
 a year in waste from the carding machines of the 
 mills. From his first day's employment the 
 massive, lumbering carding machinery had been 
 to him as a lout of a boy. Its great strength and 
 mighty roar were impressive but for every revo- 
 lution of the huge rollers that caught the flow 
 of precious cotton there was waste. It filled the 
 air with lint, choking the operatives as they 
 worked. A new adjustment of certain parts of 
 the machinery was the problem engaging his 
 mind. He wrought over his plans until he felt 
 that they would stand the proving test of a model; 
 then the accumulated wages stood him well, as 
 a forgotten friend sometimes stands a man. He 
 had the model built and installed in the attic of 
 the Lansing home. 
 
 Power was obtained by connecting a small 
 dynamo with wires supplying the house with 
 electric lights. Cotton was brought from the 
 mills and one night Lansing and Nelson sat for an 
 hour watching the tiny carding machine meet the
 
 168 THE QUARRY 
 
 new demands of economy put upon it. There was 
 not an ounce of cotton waste! 
 
 Nelson oiled the model, replenished it with a new 
 supply of cotton, and for another hour the two men 
 sat and watched it work. 
 
 There was no clapping of hands upon shoulders, 
 no outbursts of enthusiasm, although the tests 
 made certain the fact that the man who had asked 
 Lansing for work but a few months before was to 
 be made rich by the product of his genius and his 
 patient toil. 
 
 " It's all right, old man," said the mill super- 
 intendent. 
 
 Nelson nodded. 
 
 " If you don't mind I'll call up Mr. Bryan, the 
 president of the company, and inform him," 
 suggested Lansing. 
 
 He hurried down the attic stairs and soon had 
 the president on the telephone. He told him 
 briefly what he had seen the model accomplish, 
 and Mr. Byran replied that he would motor .over 
 to his house immediately. 
 
 The mill president, a gray and courtly gentle- 
 man, reached the house within a half hour. It 
 was early evening and the children were not
 
 THE QUARRY 169 
 
 yet abed. With their mother they had listened 
 to the hum of the working model under the 
 eaves. All were fascinated with the idea that in 
 their home the kindly and silent stranger had 
 achieved a mechanical triumph. They trooped 
 up-stairs behind Mr. Bryan and the little throng 
 gathered about the machinery to see it in opera- 
 tion. 
 
 "Mr. Bryan, this is Mr. Nelson," said Lan- 
 sing, introducing the president to his fellow 
 worker. " You have heard me speak of him. I 
 thought his achievement of such importance 
 that no time should be lost in informing yon 
 of it." 
 
 Mr. Bryan extended his hand to Nelson. 
 
 " I am glad to meet you," he said, " and I hope 
 that your invention will prove all that Mr. Lan- 
 sing expects of it. He is quite a partisan of 
 yours, though. He likes to sing your praises, 
 Mr. Nelson." 
 
 The model was ready for its third test. Nelson 
 switched on the current. 
 
 Mr. Bryan sat, watching it in operation, 
 stroking his white mustache reflectively and peer- 
 ing with keen, blue eyes at the new cogs and rollers
 
 170 THE QUARRY 
 
 fashioned under the direction of this mechanic 
 who had crossed the North Carolina border to 
 join his army of workers. 
 
 " We have given it two hours' work already," 
 explained Lansing, " and have found no waste 
 whatever. There is no lint in the air, as you may 
 notice. That in itself means a great deal for the 
 health of the operatives." 
 
 Mr. Bryan nodded. 
 
 An hour passed and Mrs. Lansing gathered her 
 brood about her skirts and took them, tip-toeing, 
 down-stairs and to bed. The three men were left 
 together when the last of the cotton was fed the 
 machine. 
 
 " I congratulate you, Mr. Nelson," said the 
 mill president, as he prepared to depart. " Your 
 new carding machine will make you a great deal 
 of fame among millmen. It will make you a com- 
 fortable fortune also, I am sure, and it will benefit 
 mill workers. It is a pleasure to me to think 
 that one of my own men has accomplished this 
 and I shall aid you all that I can in seeing that 
 your patent rights are protected." 
 
 Lansing and Nelson saw Mr. Bryan to his 
 machine and then went to the library.
 
 THE QUARRY 171 
 
 " I hope we don't lose you when the money 
 comes in," said Lansing. 
 
 " Lose me? " echoed Nelson with a smile. 
 " This is my home and I hope to live and die here. 
 I came here friendless and have found friends and 
 fortune."
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 NELSON'S quiet, even grave demeanor, as 
 he faced the promise of almost immediate 
 wealth and success, caught the interest 
 of Mr. Bryan, who realized that the machinist and 
 inventor was high above the average in manhood 
 and intellectual capacity. 
 
 On the other hand, Nelson felt that Mr. Bryan 
 was a man of the highest integrity and that he 
 could be trusted as a father would be trusted by 
 his sons. The mill president lost no time in 
 having Nelson's invention fully protected by 
 patents. One of the wealthiest of Southern capital- 
 ists, it was a simple matter for him to call the 
 attention of the manufacturers of mill machinery 
 to the work of his employee. In due time, Nelson 
 was called to the president's office and there met 
 the representatives of the firm that would put 
 his invention on the market. 
 
 For the right to manufacture and sell his im- 
 proved carding machine Nelson was paid ten
 
 THE QUARRY 173 
 
 thousand dollars cash and given a royalty on the 
 sales. 
 
 When the transaction was closed and the money 
 deposited in his bank, John Nelson felt that the 
 dream of his prison days was beginning to materi- 
 alize. The foundation of the fortune necessary 
 for him to prosecute a world-wide search for the 
 man for whose crime he had suffered was laid. 
 Harried and hounded, he had never ceased to 
 struggle, had never quailed and had never given 
 up the hope that some day the black cloud cast 
 over his life by the police would be lifted, and 
 that from his hands would be washed the mock 
 blood stain put upon them. His aim was higher 
 than money and ease. To pile up a fortune was 
 only a detail of the task before him. All his in- 
 telligence and patience would be tried when it 
 came to spending that fortune in the effort to 
 rid himself of the stigma of being James Mont- 
 gomery, alias John Nelson, murderer and es- 
 caped convict. 
 
 His brain was already busy with the incuba- 
 tion of another inventive idea. His gait over the 
 course to the cherished goal was made and there 
 would be no flagging, no more than there had
 
 174 THE QUARRY 
 
 been when he made his brave dash for liberty, 
 and sweat and blood poured from him. 
 
 The Sabbath following the disposal of his 
 patent rights was a day of serious and grateful 
 contemplation to Nelson. He attended service 
 with the Lansings and then shut himself in his 
 room. Surely, he thought during his moments 
 of introspection, the world is good and fair. Hu- 
 man institutions might work cruelly and some 
 of those people who were designed to operate 
 them might be bloodless and inhumane, but there 
 seemed to be some mysterious guiding force that 
 had led him to this beautiful little corner of the 
 earth where the men were kind and just. He had 
 been taken from under the wheels of the Jugger- 
 naut of society, the Law, before the heart had 
 been crushed out of him. A devout man, retain- 
 ing the simple and beautiful faith of an old-fash- 
 ioned mother, he attributed all this to the mercy 
 of God. 
 
 His reflections were brought to an end by a 
 call from Mrs. Lansing, informing him that Mr. 
 Bryan wanted him on the telephone. He hastened 
 to the instrument in the hall below and answered 
 a pleasant greeting from the mill president.
 
 THE QUARRY 175 
 
 " I have a letter from the people you signed 
 with," Mr. Bryan informed him over the wires, 
 " and they desire to know whether they may have 
 an option on your second invention. They are 
 greatly pleased with the outlook under your first 
 contract and seem to think that you will do big 
 things in time to come." 
 
 " The next one may be a failure," said Nelson, 
 with a little laugh of pleasure at the praise given 
 him. 
 
 " I would like to talk the matter over with you," 
 suggested Mr. Bryan. " If you have nothing 
 else to do, come over to supper. My car is handy; 
 suppose I run over for you? " 
 
 "Thank you; I shall be glad to spend the after- 
 noon with you." 
 
 " Better still," Mr. Bryan added, " get your 
 things together and spend the evening with us. 
 Then we can talk into the night and I'll take you 
 in to the mills with me in the morning." 
 
 Nelson promised to be ready and left the in- 
 strument to pack his suit-case. 
 
 Mrs. Lansing, with motherly care, supervised 
 the hasty packing, seeing to it that he forgot 
 none of the essentials of toilet and that he carried
 
 176 THE QUARRY 
 
 with him the best of his linen. Within half an 
 hour Nelson was with the mill president in his 
 motor, speeding over the hard, red clay roads to- 
 ward his home. 
 
 The autumn was well advanced. The leaves and 
 vines of the forests through which they traveled 
 were touched with gold and bronze and crimson. 
 
 The Bryan home was in the center of a mag- 
 nificent estate of a thousand acres, through which 
 flowed a branch of the Saluda River. Its well- 
 tilled fields had yielded their crops for the year 
 and its granaries were filled. The sheen of sleek, 
 blooded cattle showed in the sunlight in the little 
 valley through which the stream wound with 
 many graceful curves. In the distance, amid 
 many majestic and ancient shade trees, the white 
 pillars of the mansion gleamed. 
 
 The motor swung through a wide, garden gate 
 and pulled up as cheerful cries of welcome came 
 to the occupants from the family assembled on 
 the piazza. 
 
 "Here we are!" cried Mr. Bryan, alighting 
 from the car. 
 
 He ran up the piazza, steps, Nelson following, 
 to a stately woman with silvery hair.
 
 THE QUARRY 177 
 
 " Mother," he said, " this is our guest, Mr. 
 Nelson. And this is my eldest boy, Jim," went 
 on Mr. Bryan, after Nelson had greeted his hostess. 
 " He is just your age, I should think, Mr. Nelson. 
 And here is Miss Molly Bryan, my daughter." 
 
 Nelson turned from James Bryan to his sister 
 and looked into a smiling, girlish face. To him 
 her eyes seemed to be patches of blue clipped from 
 the heavens. The sunlight of youth and a light 
 heart was in them. Her hair was gold, fine spun 
 and piled high on her shapely head. Her cheeks 
 were rich in coloring, like the cheeks of English 
 lassies, and her lips were sweet and full. 
 
 Although there lurked in her constant smile 
 the coquetry that is the possession of all pretty 
 girls of twenty, she had the grace of bearing of her 
 mother, a wide brow and a chin that suggested 
 strength of character and determination. 
 
 " I am glad to meet the famous Mr. Nelson," 
 she said pleasantly, as she studied his face for 
 a moment. " We have heard father speak of 
 your inventive work so often. He says that you 
 are a wizard with machinery." 
 
 Nelson felt his face grow hot. All that he had 
 known of human affection was the great love
 
 178 THE QUARRY 
 
 that his mother had given him and the dumb, 
 animal-like devotion of the old convict who had 
 helped him escape from Sing Sing. There seemed 
 to be a caress in the limpid eyes of this lovely girl 
 before him. His heart beat wildly within him; 
 the warm touch of her hand sent a thrill through 
 his whole being. 
 
 A strange feeling of exaltation came over him. 
 It was as if he had journeyed for years through 
 a parched and barren land and had come suddenly 
 upon the dawn of a new day in a fair and smiling 
 country. A joy so profound and pure that it 
 left him speechless and amazed stirred in his breast. 
 The faint line that separates the emotions that 
 bring tears and smiles was drawn for him. Pain 
 shot through his heart, as if an arrow had pierced 
 it. 
 
 "I I didn't know that I had become 
 famous," he managed to stammer. 
 
 She realized his bewilderment and from his 
 eyes caught the confession that suddenly, swiftly 
 and unexpectedly he had met the woman he was 
 to love. 
 
 " Oh, but father knows all about machinery 
 and he says that you are a wizard," she laugh-
 
 THE QUARRY 179 
 
 ingly protested, the color in her cheeks deep- 
 ening. 
 
 " Molly," reproved the mother, " Mr. Nelson 
 has not yet had time to get the dust of travel from 
 him and here you are chaffing him already." 
 
 The music of Molly's laughter lingered in his 
 ears as Nelson followed his host. As they passed 
 through the wide entrance hall of the mansion, 
 he saw to his left the great dining-room with its 
 open fireplace, its stately mahogany, its wealth 
 of silver and cut glass. In the hall were hung 
 old portraits of the members of the family in days 
 long gone. All about him was evidence of cul- 
 ture and refinement acquired by generations of 
 training and right living. 
 
 " My boy, Jim, is a lawyer," Mr. Bryan told 
 Nelson. " We shall be busy on some other 
 legal matters before we can take up the question 
 of your next invention. I'll leave you to the care 
 of Molly. She is a great walker and I'll warrant 
 you that when she brings you back from a tour 
 of the place you will have a splendid appetite 
 for supper." 
 
 At this prospect Nelson made his toilet with 
 the eagerness of a boy and appeared on the piazza.
 
 180 THE QUARRY 
 
 in a few moments. Molly was waiting for him, 
 eager for a tramp over fields and through woods 
 and the opportunity to find out more of the nature 
 of the grave, bearded, young inventor given in 
 her charge for the afternoon.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE opening of John Nelson's heart to the 
 first demand of love found it clean and 
 unmarked by false passion. Its response 
 to the mystically sent message from the soul of 
 Molly Bryan was such as the heart of a boy 
 makes when the pang of first love strikes him. 
 
 There was no thought of sex to obtrude itself 
 and claim its creature-portion of a lover's para- 
 dise. The man's wholesome nature had been 
 affected by only one other woman. The hands of 
 a good mother had swept the strings of his heart 
 and, as a lute suspended, it had vibrated even 
 until now, when the second woman entered his 
 life to fill it with music. 
 
 Walking at his side, over paths heavy with 
 fallen leaves, the incense of fall wild flowers and 
 the fast-gathering loam making sadly sweet the 
 afternoon air of the waning autumn season, she 
 seemed to him less of earth than heaven. The 
 rustle of the crimson and golden leaves under their
 
 182 THE QUARRY 
 
 feet drowned the soft sounds of her garments. He 
 heard only her voice; he felt only the appreciation 
 of the sanctity of her presence. To him she was a 
 creature that God had fashioned after fashioning 
 the lilies, the white of the petals and the gold of 
 the stamens still upon His kindly hands to make 
 pure her soul and gild her hair. 
 
 When he dared speak to her, he had to make an 
 effort to keep his sonorous voice from trembling. 
 She felt, instinctively, the effect that her nearness 
 had upon the quiet, modest companion of her 
 walk and Molly Bryan accepted with a feeling 
 akin to awe the tribute it implied. 
 
 Her buoyancy of spirit was not the efferves- 
 cence of a light mind but of a light heart, a heart 
 that had never known sorrow or pain or sin. Her 
 stately mother had lived at a time when Southern 
 youth had enjoyed no frivolity. Four bloody 
 years of awful strife, four years of the agony of 
 suspense while a " Cause " was being fought out, 
 four years of sewing for hospitals in the field and 
 in the towns had brought the mother of Molly 
 Bryan to womanhood and to wifehood and mother- 
 hood equipped as the mothers of Sparta were 
 equipped.
 
 THE QUARRY 183 
 
 Nelson would have been glad to have remained 
 silent in the possession of these few first hours of 
 her presence, and had she been as untrained and 
 as uncouth as he was in the social demands, he 
 would have let no word escape his lips. 
 
 Not knowing the depth of his nature and guess- 
 ing nothing of the tragedy of his life, she attributed 
 his taciturnity to shyness. She soon found a 
 way to unloosen his tongue. 
 
 " It is glorious in the Indian Summer," she 
 said, as they paused to feast their eyes upon a 
 mingling of gold and crimson leaves, " but in the 
 spring it is even more beautiful through all this 
 country. Before the snow disappears, the trail- 
 ing arbutus is to be found on the mountainsides." 
 
 The simple pleasures of the road, when he had 
 traveled as a poor tinker in his flight from the 
 North to this haven, had brought him the joyful 
 knowledge of growing wild things. In the high- 
 ways he had come to know the flowers and while 
 resting in his enforced vagabondage he had found 
 delight in random volumes of the poets, who had 
 come to know the beauties of nature before him. 
 
 She lured him from his silence with questions 
 about trees and flowers and brought from him his
 
 184 THE QUARRY 
 
 simple praise of all that was so freely given to him 
 who would but open his eyes and look about him 
 with discernment. He had read among the poets 
 of Israel that the earth was but the footstool of 
 God. He quoted the passage and added that no 
 finer brocade was ever designed or conceived than 
 that made by the fields and the woods. 
 
 She listened to him eagerly and coaxed him 
 with questions when he faltered and seemed 
 suddenly conscious of the fact that he was ac- 
 tually talking to her. 
 
 The sun had gone across the mountains into 
 the Tennessee country and beyond when they 
 returned to the Bryan home. The candles were 
 lighted in the old girandoles upon the walls of 
 the dining-room and the logs of oak and hickory 
 and pine, above a bed of gray ashes, were making 
 the shadows dance fantastically at their feet. 
 
 The supper hour, with Molly seated at his 
 side, the charm of a contented family circle and 
 the hospitable attentions of Mr. and Mrs. Bryan 
 put Nelson at ease. 
 
 "It will not be necessary to worry longer about 
 the proposition of your manufacturers to secure 
 an option on your next invention," Mr. Bryan
 
 THE QUARRY 185 
 
 told Nelson, as they left the table. " They sent 
 along a contract and Jim has gone over it care- 
 fully. Jim thinks that it is very fair and that it 
 will be to your advantage to close with them." 
 
 Nelson thanked his employer. 
 
 " It is a pleasure for me, Nelson," replied Mr. 
 Bryan. " If your brains improve the cotton in- 
 dustry, you are not the only beneficiary. Every 
 device that your science produces will bring benefit 
 to all of us. God speed your work." 
 
 " I have hope of accomplishing a great deal 
 more," Nelson told Mr. Bryan. They had made 
 their way to the mill president's library and were 
 seated about his hearth. " My work is my one 
 pleasure in life," he continued. " I am only a 
 beginner, but each year and the advantage of 
 working in your splendid plant will give me equip- 
 ment for serious efforts in invention." 
 
 " Your first invention has made you practi- 
 cally independent, so far as wages go," said Mr. 
 Bryan, " and I must confess that I am a little 
 disturbed on that account. I would like you to 
 remain with us. In a very little while I may be 
 able to offer you the general managership. New 
 mills are to be built in the adjoining county and
 
 186 THE QUARRY 
 
 Lansing and the present vice-president and general 
 manager will be sent there to get them going." 
 
 " It is a very high compliment you pay me, Mr. 
 Bryan," Nelson replied. " I had no intention of 
 ever leaving Greenville. I hope that I shall be 
 found worthy of your belief in my capacity." 
 
 The two chatted until bedtime, Mr. Bryan en- 
 joying more than one cigar as he studied Nelson 
 and coming to the conclusion that he would make 
 no mistake in advancing him until he joined the 
 board of directors of his company and became 
 his right-hand man in the operation of the great 
 plant under his care. 
 
 Molly came and kissed her father good night, 
 paused to laugh and chat for a few seconds and 
 departed, Nelson following her from the library 
 and going to his room. 
 
 As she ascended the stairs, Molly paused to 
 wave her hand to him and smile her good night. 
 She held a lighted taper in one hand and shaded 
 the flame from the draught with the other. The 
 light shone on her pretty face as she smiled on the 
 shadowy stair. 
 
 Nelson went to his room. Her thoughts must 
 have followed him, for he seemed to feel her pres-
 
 THE QUARRY 187 
 
 ence as he stood at an open window and stared 
 out into the darkness. He was in love, deeply, 
 wonderfully, tragically in love. 
 
 " What would he not do, what could he not 
 do to gain her, to have her and to hold her through 
 life and through death! " he said to himself. And 
 yet, as he stood at the window, trying to master 
 himself, he realized the barrier that separated 
 them. If she came to him to share her life with 
 his, she would enter a cloud without a silver 
 lining. 
 
 In the records of the courts of the land he was 
 written down as a convicted murderer. A price 
 was upon his head! A human bloodhound was 
 snuffing the world over for a scent that would 
 fetch him to bay. The curse that was upon him 
 would be spread with greater capacity for hurt to 
 his wife and to their children and their children's 
 children. 
 
 There was one way and one way only to lead 
 him to happiness. With the wealth he gathered 
 he would prosecute a hunt for the real murderer. 
 He felt that the time had come for him to set 
 about this task. A large reward might aid in 
 bringing about the capture of the man. But who
 
 188 THE QUARRY 
 
 would offer it? Detectives might be employed 
 in every city of the country to seek him out, but 
 who would employ them? Menace most dreadful 
 would be his the moment he stirred from the 
 cover he had found in this peaceful mill city. 
 
 He sank in a chair, covered his face with his 
 hands and fought to choke down the sobs that 
 rose in his throat. 
 
 After all he was nothing but an escaped convict!
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 AFTER his visit to the Bryans and his 
 meeting with Molly, Nelson struggled 
 heroically to put aside thoughts of love. 
 
 He sought to divert his mind by charitable work 
 among the poor and ignorant of the millhands. 
 The poverty and distress that come, especially 
 to children, from shiftless and intemperate parents 
 could not be eradicated by formal efforts. The 
 company's free school dragged along in the dol- 
 drums, the children of the operatives preferring 
 to work at the bobbins and their parents en- 
 couraging them to abandon their books. Few of 
 the mill families put aside any of their earnings 
 for rainy days. 
 
 Nelson began to give a part of each day to 
 helping those who were in dire need, in seeing that 
 the sick were healed and that the hungry were 
 fed. 
 
 It was while on one of these little journeys, 
 which he made secretly, that he again came in
 
 190 THE QUARRY 
 
 contact with Molly Bryan. He found her strug- 
 gling to straighten out the affairs of a family in 
 one of the bleak little cottages provided for the 
 workers. The father of the family had gone off 
 with another woman. The mother had just added 
 another baby to her already large brood and there 
 was only the meager pay of the two oldest children 
 to keep the wolf from the door. 
 
 He found Molly playing the part of a minister- 
 ing angel in this misery-encumbered home. With 
 one of her father's servants she had made the 
 place clean, had brought flowers to the mother's 
 room and food to the bare pantry. A physician 
 had taken charge of the patient and the new baby, 
 and the girl had paused to rest in her work of 
 charity. She was flushed and tired as she sat 
 with rather grimy hands in the living room. Her 
 golden hair had tumbled about her ears and her 
 skirts were still pinned high above her boot 
 tops. 
 
 " Oh! " she cried in surprise, as Nelson entered 
 the room. 
 
 He started back, astonished and embarrassed. 
 " I beg your pardon, Miss Bryan," he apologized. 
 " I did not know that you were here. I under-
 
 THE QUARRY 191 
 
 stood that this family was in trouble and I came 
 over to see what could be done." 
 
 " And so did I," she said. " I have just fin- 
 ished straightening out things. Turn around 
 and look out of the door until I make myself 
 presentable." 
 
 He wheeled about and she took the pins from 
 her skirts and straightened her hair before a 
 cracked and warped mirror. 
 
 " Now, you may turn around again," she said, 
 going to him. 
 
 " You are tired," he suggested solicitously. 
 
 " Not very." 
 
 " Have you been here all the morning? " 
 
 " Yes; I give two days a week to the cottages, 
 helping as much as I can those who need help." 
 
 He hesitated, questioning himself whether to 
 tell her that he hoped to use some of his money 
 in the same work. 
 
 " I thought that I would like to help, too, when 
 such cases as this arose," he said finally. 
 
 " I shall take you as an assistant," she told 
 him, looking up into his eyes. " I knew that you 
 had a big heart the moment I saw you. What is 
 there that made me think you a man of sacrifice? "
 
 192 THE QUARRY 
 
 "I sacrifice? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, something told me that you were the 
 kind of man to lay down his life for his fellow 
 creatures." 
 
 " I would like to help others as much as possible 
 because, perhaps, I have been helped and cannot 
 forget it," he replied quietly. 
 
 " I heard in another cottage that you had 
 paid the fines of two brothers who had quarreled 
 and had been arrested, and that you had made 
 them go in peace together," she said. " Did you 
 do that?" 
 
 " It was little to do." 
 
 " And I heard that you had pleaded for a 
 young man who had been caught stealing and that 
 the magistrate gave him another chance." 
 
 " The young man had an old mother to sup- 
 port and he might never make another mistake. 
 Besides, if he had been locked up it would have 
 been the helpless mother who would have suf- 
 fered." 
 
 She had placed a hand on his right arm as 
 she catechized him. 
 
 " I am afraid," she said, standing close to him 
 and looking him in the eyes, " that I shall have
 
 THE QUARRY 193 
 
 to be the assistant and you the Samaritan. I 
 shall care for the ill and you shall ask forgiveness 
 and help for the wretched and the sinful." 
 
 He touched her hand with his and pressed it 
 ever so lightly. 
 
 " We should be going," he suggested. " It is 
 very near the noon hour." 
 
 " I am to join father in his office and take him 
 home to dinner," she said, as they left the cottage 
 and the mill settlement. " Won't you come with 
 us? I shall have father invite you." 
 
 " I am sorry but it is not possible to-day," he 
 replied. " It is very kind of you, but I have much 
 lost time to make up and I must go into the city on 
 business." 
 
 They had come to a cross-road. 
 
 " I must go this way," he told her, pausing. 
 
 She looked disappointed. 
 
 His heart was beating fast and he could think 
 of nothing commonplace enough to say. The wild 
 surge of love that had come to him at the first 
 glimpse of her face he experienced again. 
 
 She studied his face for a moment and saw that 
 he was inwardly disturbed. She wondered if it 
 was a return of his old shyness and then thought
 
 194 THE QUARRY 
 
 that, perhaps, it was because he did not want to 
 leave her. 
 
 " Good-by," she said softly, extending her 
 little gloved hand. He touched her fingers lightly 
 and lifted his hat. 
 
 " Good-by," he repeated. 
 
 " Tuesdays and Fridays are my days in the 
 settlement," she said over her shoulder, as she 
 started off. 
 
 He stood in the road watching her until she 
 disappeared around its first bend.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 ALTHOUGH Nelson devoted every hour 
 of the day for the next succeeding four 
 months to perfecting a second invention, 
 the winter proved a period of mental agony to 
 him. His second invention was tested in due 
 time and brought him an even larger financial 
 reward than the first but, try as he might, he 
 could not throw from him the great love that ab- 
 sorbed his soul. His thoughts dwelt upon Molly 
 Bryan as he worked and his nights were filled with 
 dreams of her. 
 
 At times he was perilously near casting the 
 dice with Fate and declaring his love for her and 
 asking her to be his wife. But when it seemed that 
 the soul within him would parch and perish if he 
 did not take that step, his brave nature asserted 
 itself and he passed through the fire of affliction 
 safely. 
 
 With a part of the money that began to flow into
 
 196 THE QUARRY 
 
 his possession from royalties, as his machines 
 were put on the market, he bought stock in the 
 mills where he was employed. He was chosen 
 a director of the company at its January meeting 
 and Mr. Bryan took him into active cooperation 
 in the direction of the management of the plant. 
 
 Neither the mill president nor his daughter 
 could understand Nelson's avoidance of their 
 home. That Nelson loved her Molly knew, with 
 all the intuition of a sensible and sweet girl. 
 That she had given him no reason to believe that 
 he was otherwise than welcome she was equally 
 certain. 
 
 It was perhaps the failure of John Nelson to 
 press his suit that made the first feeling of tender- 
 ness and admiration she had for him turn quickly 
 into genuine love. It is only that which is hard 
 to grasp, that is denied for a long time, that 
 makes hunger of soul or body. 
 
 Toward the end of winter a thing occurred 
 that drove despair into Nelson's heart and made 
 him decide immediately as to his future course. 
 
 Mr. Bryan entered his office in the mill and 
 handed him a letter that had been opened. In the 
 left-hand corner of the envelope was the seal of
 
 THE QUARRY 197 
 
 the City of New York and the printed words: 
 " Department of Police, New York City." 
 
 " You might read this for your own guidance, 
 Nelson," said Mr. Bryan, " and then pass it 
 along to the foremen of the various departments." 
 
 Nelson drew forth the letter, a mimeographed 
 sheet, asking that a lookout be kept for James 
 Montgomery, escaped convict and murderer, sen- 
 tenced for life to Sing Sing. The man the police 
 wanted was an expert machinist, was likely to 
 apply for work anywhere in the industrial sections 
 of the country, and then followed a minute de- 
 scription of feature and build of body. 
 
 The hound was still after the quarry. 
 
 " I'll look after it, Mr. Bryan," he managed to 
 say. 
 
 " What's the matter to-day? " asked the presi- 
 dent. " You look pale and worried." 
 
 " Nothing nothing serious at any rate," re- 
 plied Nelson. 
 
 " You are working too hard; better take it easy 
 for awhile," advised Mr. Bryan. He paced the 
 floor of his right-hand man's office for a moment, 
 stroking his gray mustache. 
 
 " Look here, Nelson," he said, in a kindly half-
 
 198 THE QUARRY 
 
 troubled tone, " something has been worrying you 
 all winter. What is it? Tell it to me. I am your 
 friend." 
 
 Nelson's face was as white as the snow on the 
 ground outside. 
 
 It was not the caliber of the man to lie. If he 
 had tried to lie he would have made a bungle of it. 
 
 " I can't tell you," he replied. 
 
 " Is it Molly? " asked Mr. Bryan. 
 
 Nelson did not reply. He could not. 
 
 " She thinks a great deal of you, my boy," 
 said her father. 
 
 Nelson left his desk and stood before Molly 
 Bryan's kindly father. A confession of his love 
 for the daughter trembled on his lips. He felt 
 that at any moment a torrent of words would 
 pour forth from him and lay bare the whole tragic, 
 terrible story hidden in his breast. Under the 
 secret he carried, his heart lay like a stone. He 
 would have given his left arm to have closed his 
 office door and made his confession, but he had 
 been hunted long enough to feel the sense of 
 caution exert itself. 
 
 If he himself felt that he should not ask Molly 
 Bryan to enter the cloud that encompassed him
 
 THE QUARRY 199 
 
 and his future, surely her father would not give 
 his assent. On the other hand, there was a chance 
 that his rapidly accumulating wealth would prove 
 the means of some day dispelling that cloud. 
 
 " Mr. Bryan," he said simply, " I can't tell what 
 is my trouble. I can only tell you that whatever 
 happens I came to you as a poor young man with- 
 out a blot on his conscience, without having done 
 harm to any one, and that I would rather suffer 
 alone than have others suffer with me." 
 
 " I hate to think of a young man having such 
 brilliant prospects being a man of sorrow," said 
 the mill president. " Your secret is yours and 
 if it is eating away your heart it gives me pain 
 to think of it. I will gladly share any affliction 
 put upon you if it does not dishonor you or your 
 friends." 
 
 Mr. Bryan returned to his office and Nelson 
 tore into tiny bits the police circular. He would 
 have to go away. There were two reasons. The 
 hound was near the quarry; his plight was bring- 
 ing sadness to the woman he loved. Not more 
 than a score of miles beyond his office window the 
 boundary lines of South Carolina tapered between 
 North Carolina and Tennessee, making a moun-
 
 200 THE QUARRY 
 
 tainous corner. There, few of the people could 
 read. The questions they asked were about the 
 weather and the scant crops of corn from which 
 they illicitly distilled enough whiskey to provide 
 them with money for clothes and medicine. Their 
 habitat was called the Dark Corner. 
 
 He would withdraw into its shadows. Per- 
 haps, after a few years, he could come out of the 
 wilderness with safety and find Molly Bryan 
 waiting for him. It was sweet for him to think 
 that any one would wait his coming. 
 
 At first the scheme seemed visionary, but care- 
 ful study of it convinced him that it was not only 
 a plausible plan but the safest he could devise. 
 He would buy a number of acres and build him- 
 self a home and a workshop. His determination 
 to devote all his energies to invention for a number 
 of years was logical and would furnish the neces- 
 sary explanation. 
 
 That night he told Lansing of his plan. 
 
 " I am going to get away from everywhere 
 for a year or so," he said to Lansing, in the latter's 
 study. " All my time shall be devoted to ex- 
 perimental work. The money from my two in- 
 ventions is constantly increasing. I shall use it
 
 THE QUARRY 201 
 
 to build a home and a workshop in the moun- 
 tains." 
 
 Lansing was machinist and student enough to 
 realize the demands insisted upon by creative 
 effort, and he gave his approval to the plan. 
 
 In the spring, while the snow still lay upon the 
 ground in shady places, Nelson attacked the wil- 
 derness with a gang of workmen. He had bought 
 five hundred acres in the Dark Corner. Here he 
 lived in a shanty with his workers, as they made a 
 clearing and he directed the blasting and cutting 
 of rock from the unscarred sides of the mountains 
 for his foundations. 
 
 When his castle in the Dark Corner neared 
 completion, he journeyed back to Greenville, 
 arriving there in the night. He timed himself 
 so that he caught an express train north. In a 
 distant city, the next day, he wrote and enclosed 
 with a one dollar certificate this personal, addressed 
 to the business office of The Herald in New York: 
 
 " Bill Greenville 19 3 Kid." 
 
 The number nineteen meant the nineteenth 
 letter of the alphabet, " S," and the number three 
 meant the third letter, " C." 
 
 Of all the men in the world there was but one
 
 202 THE QUARRY 
 
 that he felt he could surely trust, one that fully 
 believed him, one that would come and help him, 
 and this man with the succor he called for now was 
 a convict. 
 
 The numbers gave Bill Hawkins all the direc- 
 tions necessary to guide him to the boy who had 
 brought something worth while into his life, 
 kindness and helpfulness.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 NELSON'S castle in the Dark Corner took 
 shape rapidly. It rose two-and-a-half 
 stories above a basement of rock. From 
 the upper windows he was given a clear view of 
 every point of the circle where sky and earth 
 met. The outside was painted a neutral color, 
 so that only a keen pair of eyes at a distance would 
 have picked out the habitation amid the sur- 
 rounding shade trees. 
 
 The high basement was planned for kitchen, 
 servants and storage purposes. The first floor 
 was arranged for his workshop, the floor above for 
 his living quarters, and the top or half-story was 
 to remain closed against every human hand save 
 that of Nelson. 
 
 There was gossip among the machinists and 
 laborers who uncrated the masses of steel and iron 
 that had been hauled over the mountain roads, for 
 among the things that were not deposited on the 
 laboratory floor were certain weights with leather
 
 204 THE QUARRY 
 
 clasps about the thickness of a man's ankle. There 
 were also iron bars and affairs of rope and polished 
 wood that looked like the trapezes and gymnastic 
 apparatus used in the circus. These things were 
 placed at the foot of the stairs leading to the 
 attic. There was a heavy lock to the door and 
 the master of the strange mountain castle never 
 parted with the key. 
 
 A small electric plant was installed to provide 
 power for his shop and lighting. 
 
 Built against one side of the castle was a cement 
 garage, in which was kept a motor of powerful 
 build and finest engines. It had been constructed 
 especially to stand the strain of broken mountain 
 roads and carried a huge gasolene tank and a place 
 for provisions. 
 
 The garage could be entered from the castle 
 by means of a door of masked design, which 
 showed neither casing nor knob. A hidden spring 
 opened and closed it. 
 
 As if seeking to get all the sunlight possible, 
 the house that John Nelson built was of many 
 windows, and each was in the deep French style. 
 Every window was, in fact, a door. It was a 
 house of many exits.
 
 THE QUARRY 205 
 
 In a separate clearing, Nelson built a house for 
 his servants and installed in it a negro, his wife 
 and his strapping black son. He gave this family 
 a piece of land to till and provided them with 
 light and fuel and wages. 
 
 Furniture, bedding, equipment in abundance 
 for his workshop and stores were taken within 
 the castle and the last of the workmen de- 
 parted. 
 
 Employing the mountain people as laborers, 
 Nelson patched the roads until he felt that he 
 could use the full power of his heavy motor in 
 traversing them, if it became necessary to tax its 
 speed. He had promised Mr. Bryan to remain in 
 an advisory capacity as the vice-president of his 
 mills, and to keep this promise he stretched from 
 pine to pine a private telephone wire between his 
 castle and the office and home of the mill presi- 
 dent. 
 
 He started his hermit life with two things be- 
 fore him besides his work as a mechanical inventor. 
 One was to wait the coming of Bill Hawkins, to 
 whom he would entrust the task of seeking in the 
 underworld the murderer of the watchman of 
 the West End bank in New York. The other was
 
 206 THE QUARRY 
 
 to prepare himself to face the day, should it ever 
 come, when a man from Mulberry Street would 
 confront him and charge him with being James 
 Montgomery. 
 
 Recollections of his five years in Sing Sing beset 
 him at regular intervals. A moment of gazing 
 from a window at the wide expanse of sky and 
 rolling mountains, the sound of the wind in the 
 trees, and the bedtime hour when he found his 
 couch soft and sweet with fresh linen would bring 
 back to him thoughts of the other thing he had 
 passed through: the absence of horizon, the barred 
 door of a cell at night, the tramping feet of a 
 thousand and a half caged men, the day's toil in 
 silence, the hideous faces of criminals being 
 crowded into deeper degeneracy by incarceration, 
 and the sentence of the court that he should re- 
 main in such plight until death. 
 
 He told himself that he would never be taken 
 back to it alive. His good, capable, well-ordered 
 brain had mapped out a careful course. Should 
 the bloodhounds of the law come upon him in 
 this place he had built for final refuge, he would 
 make his fight to pass them. 
 
 During his visits to Greenville he cashed checks
 
 THE QUARRY 207 
 
 paid him for royalties on his inventions until 
 he secured ten thousand dollars in certificates of 
 denominations he could use anywhere. 
 
 If flight became necessary, he would go through 
 the masked door to his high-powered machine. 
 Its great oil tank was always filled, its tires ever 
 kept in the best condition, and stowed away under 
 the seat were provisions and a flask of water. 
 Unless he was shot down in his tracks or surprised 
 and overpowered suddenly, he could defy pursuit 
 through the wild country about him. 
 
 Each morning he passed through the door to the 
 attic stairs and locked it behind him. For an hour 
 he worked with the weights and bars, changing 
 his measurements slowly but surely. The frac- 
 tion of an inch in the length of arm or leg would 
 discredit the Bertillon record made of him and 
 filed in the Bureau of Identification at police 
 headquarters in New York. He gave many an 
 hour of agony to achieve this and his face was 
 chalky white when he left the attic and locked its 
 door behind him each day. 
 
 With the anxiety and the hard work in his 
 laboratory, a touch of gray came to his hair and 
 beard. He looked a man of forty-five, save
 
 208 THE QUARRY 
 
 when he smiled, but the purity and goodness of 
 his nature shone forth in his countenance. 
 
 More money came to him as the foreign rights 
 of his inventions were disposed of, and he cast 
 about him for an opportunity to put it in use for 
 others. He employed as many of the sturdy moun- 
 taineers as he could in road work, paying them 
 good wages. He patched their cabins, provided 
 medicines for their sick, and blankets and stout 
 clothes for the women and children. 
 
 The scattered families of these poor people 
 looked up to him with mingled wonder and grati- 
 tude. When time rid them of their childlike 
 timidity, they came to know him and to love him. 
 
 In cell and in workshop, on the highway or in 
 farmhouse, Nelson exerted a silent power for 
 good because of the good that was in him. To the 
 Dark Corner he came as a veritable shaft of sun- 
 light from heaven.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THERE is no statute of limitations for an 
 escaped convict. He is always legitimate 
 quarry. 
 
 Nearly ten years had passed since James Mont- 
 gomery was brought before the desk of Inspector 
 Ranscombe at police headquarters in Mulberry 
 Street. 
 
 Ten years ! The first decade of a man's majority, 
 the heart of his life, the time when character 
 shapes, when the soul is nascent, when the heart 
 swings into responsive beat to all that is fine and 
 beautiful or to all that is the reverse, and when 
 the things of childhood disappear in a mist and the 
 emotions and affections of manhood take their 
 place. 
 
 There had been changes at headquarters in 
 that time. The administration of the city was 
 in other hands. The police department had gone 
 through the throes of more than one shake-up
 
 210 THE QUARRY 
 
 and there had been several police commission- 
 ers. 
 
 Ranscombe had been relieved of his important 
 post as the chief of the city's little army of plain- 
 clothes men, but he had played the game of de- 
 partment politics well and had won his way back 
 to the Central Office. The fight had rattled his 
 fast drying bones for a short while, had interested 
 him and in the end had given him fresh interest in 
 life. He went back to his job all the keener for 
 his task. 
 
 On his return he found Detective Lieutenant 
 Mike Kearney, stolid, emotionless, waiting for 
 an assignment to a case, as usual. The inspector 
 knew his value and had him promoted to the 
 grade of captain. He assigned Kearney to take 
 charge of the homicide squad. 
 
 With this advancement Kearney reached the 
 climax of his career. He could go no higher. 
 Politics did not interest him. There was nothing 
 of the diplomat in his make-up. He would have 
 made a poor inspector, for his natural instinct 
 of ferreting would have compelled him to lower 
 his nose to the trail of every criminal at large, 
 and he would have become bewildered by the
 
 THE QUARRY 211 
 
 maze of tracks and scents. He would have tried 
 to do all the work himself, leaving nothing for his 
 subordinates. 
 
 But with only the homicide cases to look after, 
 he was capable of holding himself in leash to some 
 extent. He could live, sleep and dream murder. 
 The men under him were the pick of the seven 
 hundred and more detectives of the department. 
 They work hardest, because in murder cases there 
 is honor and glory. The more atrocious and puz- 
 zling a murder mystery, the more fame in the 
 public prints for the sleuths tracking the criminal 
 and sending him to the chair. 
 
 Kearney started out in his new post with a 
 slate clean, save for one inscription the number 
 60,108. 
 
 Those numerals were burned in his brain. They 
 represented the only case in his entire career 
 when he had been foiled, when ingenuity, luck 
 or whatever it was, had played successfully 
 against his dogged and remorseless method of pur- 
 suit. He felt that he was being cheated every day 
 that the escaped convict enjoyed life outside of 
 Sing Sing's walls. 
 
 Had Montgomery been a thief, a forger or a
 
 212 THE QUARRY 
 
 bigamist, he could have turned the matter over 
 to his inspector, as a case still pending. But he 
 had been convicted of murder and his case properly 
 belonged in the Homicide Bureau. 
 
 Gradually Kearney got the affairs of the bureau 
 working to suit him, and he could pause and give 
 some study to the Montgomery matter. 
 
 The annual summer crime wave had subsided 
 and with the coming of cool weather, men ceased 
 to see red; instead of the resort to knife, pistol 
 or poison, enmities ended with a curse or a sneer. 
 The fever of disordered brains subsided. The 
 Homicide Bureau was in for a dull period. 
 
 Captain Kearney's mind turned from the evil 
 corners of the metropolis to the walled city up 
 the Hudson. Time had changed the prison staffs 
 throughout the State. There was a new super- 
 intendent of prisons and a new warden at Sing 
 Sing. Kearney's old enemy, the warden who had 
 frowned on his third degree methods with Con- 
 vict Number 60,110, had been retired to private 
 life. 
 
 Kearney called up the new warden and asked 
 for an appointment the next time he came to the 
 city. The warden was even then about to start
 
 THE QUARRY 213 
 
 for town, and he would drop in at headquar- 
 ters. 
 
 Within two hours the guardian of Sing Sing's 
 population was seated beside Kearney's desk. 
 
 " I gotta case," explained the detective, " that 
 I'm anxious to clean up. Ten years ago I sent 
 a young feller named Montgomery to Sing Sing 
 for murder in the second. He was put away for 
 life. Five years ago, before you got on the job, 
 he escaped. A crook named Hawkins, his cell- 
 mate, helped him to get out. The old warden 
 turned me down hard when I tried to put the 
 screws to Hawkins. Now, I gotta scheme." He 
 paused to get the full attention of the warden. 
 
 " As I dope it out from the records," he went 
 on, " this convict Hawkins has served two-thirds 
 of his term. I want him turned out, but I don't 
 want him to know that I had anything to do with 
 it. I'll have a shadow put on him the moment he 
 leaves prison, and if he joins that young feller 
 he helped get out, I'm gonna get the ' lifer ' and 
 put him back where he belongs. D'yuh get me? " 
 
 " I gotcha." 
 
 " You can fix it? " 
 
 " Easy."
 
 214 THE QUARRY 
 
 " After Hawkins flushes the bird for us, and 
 we get the real game, then we can lay back and 
 watch Hawkins. He'll go back to his old tricks 
 and soon .we'll have him back where he belongs." 
 
 The warden nodded approval, a smile of admi- 
 ration playing about his lips. 
 
 " The Probation Board is now in session," he 
 said, with a laugh. " We'll turn him out as an 
 act of mercy and in the hope that he will reform 
 and make a good citizen." 
 
 " I'll get a couple of shadows up there in the 
 morning," Kearney told him. The warden de- 
 parted and Kearney closed his desk and started 
 for dinner in his mother's little flat in Oliver Street. 
 
 The more he thought of the plan to use Hawkins 
 to unconsciously betray his friend the more he 
 liked it. He would leave a lieutenant in charge 
 of his bureau for a few days and take the trail 
 himself in the hope that it would lead speedily 
 to the game he wanted.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE silent influence of five years with a 
 man who prayed to his God morning 
 and night and kept a brave heart in his 
 bosom, although he was suffering bitter injustice, 
 had a lasting effect on Bill Hawkins. 
 
 The old burglar had come to look upon James 
 Montgomery as if he were his own son grown to 
 manhood, and this affection, which had grown 
 within him gradually, drove bitterness from his 
 heart. It was as if the tragedy of his own life 
 had been veiled by a kindly hand. Had he been 
 as brave as this lad he had helped to reach freedom, 
 had he been blessed with such a mother as Mont- 
 gomery had, and had he been taught to pray and 
 put his trust in God, the tragedy of his son's 
 death and of his wife's bitter fate might never 
 have come about. 
 
 As the days passed in Sing Sing and the boy was 
 not brought back to his cell, Bill found his spirits
 
 216 THE QUARRY 
 
 gradually brightening. He had accomplished 
 something in life, bound though he was and held 
 within walls of stone and steel. 
 
 He learned to conform to the prison regulations 
 and his new course of conduct was not without 
 its good effect. His red disc was gone forever, 
 of course, but he could still win chevrons and 
 turn them into stars of honor with each five years 
 of exemplary behavior. 
 
 In the cutting room, the " Butcher " still kept 
 a good record and received the benefits thereof 
 in letters and newspapers. As they worked over 
 their tailoring, the two talked with the deaf and 
 dumb alphabet and Bill kept in daily touch with 
 the personal column of the Herald. 
 
 The message finally came and Bill was sig- 
 nalled by the "Butcher" to stand by to receive it. 
 He quickly comprehended the use of the numbers 
 and knew that he would find Montgomery in 
 Greenville, S. C. 
 
 As if Fate had determined to make up for all 
 the bad luck of the past with one happy surprise, 
 Bill was summoned before the Probation Board 
 that very day. 
 
 He had four red chevrons on his sleeve and that
 
 THE QUARRY 217 
 
 was something worth while for a one-time re- 
 bellious, third-term man to show. 
 
 Bill entered the trial room, walking as if in a 
 dream. He knew of no outside effort to gain his 
 release but he knew also that for four years he 
 had walked as straight a line as ever a convict 
 walked. He saw the chairman fingering some 
 papers at a table about which sat the other 
 members of the Board. 
 
 Bill's old thatch was now as white as snow. Ten 
 years after the mid-century mark leave heavy 
 traces. His eyes seemed set even deeper in his 
 head and his high cheek-bones seemed to jut out 
 further. But his tightly closed lips made a firmer 
 mark than they had when he started his third 
 term for burglary. The expression of cunning and 
 craftiness was gone from his features. The jaw 
 was still heavy and low set and the brow sloped, 
 but there was the faint light of regeneration in 
 his face. He was an old man and a somber 
 streak in life's harlequinade but he was no longer 
 crooked and ugly. He was a creature with a soul 
 regained. 
 
 "Number 60,110," he heard the warden say, 
 " has been a splendid prisoner for the last four
 
 218 THE QUARRY 
 
 years. He is getting old and it looks as if he 
 might straighten out if given a chance." 
 
 Bill did not know the motive back of this ut- 
 terance of a truth that was blessed to him. He 
 stood silent before his judges. 
 
 " If you are released on probation, will you 
 try to be worthy of the chance given you and will 
 you report to the Board once every month by 
 letter? " the chairman asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir," he replied, his voice trembling as he 
 began to realize that the prison garb was about 
 to drop from him. 
 
 " We have studied your case and think it 
 worth while to give you a trial," the chairman told 
 him. "That is all." 
 
 He was free! It was hard for him to understand. 
 A miracle had been wrought, it seemed to him. 
 Kindness, mercy, compassion had been offered 
 him, a thief. There must have been truth in that 
 story he heard told in chapel about Christ's 
 promise of heaven to the two thieves who had been 
 crucified for their crimes. 
 
 Dazed and spiritually troubled, the old man 
 walked to his cell. He heard the whistle blow for 
 work to cease in the shops. He heard it, but he
 
 THE QUARRY 219 
 
 did not move to the barred door of his cell. It 
 was time to wash up for dinner, but the thought 
 of food brought revulsion. He wanted the feel of 
 the outside air. He would stand in the road and 
 throw back his head and drink in the breath of 
 free and living things. He did not answer at 
 the mess formation and a guard came to his cell. 
 
 Bill explained that he had been granted proba- 
 tion and that he was a free man. He could not 
 eat; he was not well. 
 
 The mess line marched off without him, the 
 dead-sounding tread of the prisoners' feet echoing 
 through the tiers. Bill stood in his cell, his arms 
 folded and his chin on his breast. 
 
 He had not asked for mercy and yet it was given 
 him! What would he find outside? No one was 
 interested in him. Yes, the boy, Jim, was. 
 
 Did the boy bring about his deliverance? 
 Surely, with a life term hanging over his head, he 
 could not have reached out from his hiding place 
 and opened the gates of Sing Sing. 
 
 Perhaps it was the God the boy used to pray to 
 morning and night. Perhaps Jim had been praying 
 for him and He had heard his prayers. 
 
 The awakening soul of Bill Hawkins leaped to
 
 220 THE QUARRY 
 
 the beautiful thought. His knees trembled and 
 he sank upon them beside his iron cot. His head 
 fell in his hands, and he prayed. Indeed he prayed, 
 for his eyes were wet with the tears of gratitude.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HAWKINS had come to Sing Sing with noth- 
 ing but his sins and his sentence of fifteen 
 years. He carried away with him a sense 
 of thankfulness, a thing he had never experienced 
 before. 
 
 The cynicism of the case-hardened criminal 
 dropped from him as the baggy gray suit dropped 
 from him. The tears that had come to his eyes 
 during that last hour in his cell had washed them 
 clear of the old baleful glitter of protest and re- 
 sentment. 
 
 Let the soul shine from the windows of a man 
 with a prognathous jaw, a sloping brow and long 
 arms and he will confound the theories of a 
 Lombroso. Let patience and dignity and suffer- 
 ing show in a face however ugly and the mere con- 
 tour means nothing. Patriots, priests, saints 
 have been as ugly and, at the same time, as beau- 
 tiful as this old burglar who left the office of the 
 warden of Sing Sing, saying to his deliverer:
 
 222 THE QUARRY 
 
 " As God is my judge and helper, I'll live the life 
 of a decent man." 
 
 The warden shook his hand and made a pretence 
 of beaming upon him. He little knew what good 
 had come from his base share in the plan of De- 
 tective Michael Kearney to use one friend to betray 
 another. 
 
 The probationer's gray suit was changed for a 
 new black one and a felt hat was pulled over his 
 forehead, hiding the defective formation. In his 
 pocket was enough money to take him whence he 
 came the morass of humanity, the underworld 
 of New York. He would return there because no 
 other world would have him, but he would return 
 a different man. 
 
 He was not going forth to evangelize. He was 
 going to seek the woman who had been a pretty 
 girl once, the woman who had suffered ten thou- 
 sand times what he had suffered, the creature upon 
 whom had fallen all the bitter misery that could 
 be heaped upon wife and mother, not because 
 she had been a thief but because her man had 
 stolen. 
 
 Never mind what had happened to her, she was 
 his wife. He was no member of polite society
 
 THE QUARRY 223 
 
 and polite society's hollow code was unknown to 
 him, a publican and sinner. She was the woman 
 who had taken him when other women had 
 turned from him with fear and revulsion. She was 
 the woman who had been patient and kind to 
 him through poverty and through poverty's ulti- 
 mate condition, drunkenness and despair. 
 
 If what Kearney had told him so brutally, 
 when he had tried to bribe him, was true, it 
 made no difference. The boy in his cell had ut- 
 tered a solemn truth to which humanity stops its 
 ears it wasn't her fault. 
 
 The once broad and massive shoulders of 
 Hawkins were bent. He walked as if carrying a 
 burden from the prison gates. Even the glory 
 of the soft autumn morning could not bring spring- 
 iness to his limbs. But as he trudged up the road 
 toward Ossining station, he removed his felt hat 
 to feel the kiss of the clean air. The sun struck 
 his silvery hair, making it shine and seem as a 
 halo. 
 
 He had elected to remain in the prison the 
 night before so that he could begin his new life 
 with the freshness of the morning. He walked 
 slowly away from the tomb to the land of the
 
 224 THE QUARRY 
 
 living. His eyes were strained by the width of 
 the new vision of broad river and horizon be- 
 yond. But he regained his sense of perspective 
 quickly, for he had been thrice caged and thrice 
 thrown out into the world. 
 
 After ten years of the miasma of sixteen hundred 
 cooped-up humans, the fragrance of the breezes 
 that swept across river and field made his nostrils 
 distend and tremble. 
 
 As he made his way through the Cabbage Patch 
 section of the prison town, he would occasionally 
 pause to watch the children playing in the road 
 and their mothers pottering about little front 
 yards, caring for tiny and dusty beds of fall flowers. 
 
 Finally he came to the steep road leading to 
 the station and made his way down the hill. 
 The rush of commuters, city-bound, was already 
 under way. The rich traveled in automobiles 
 and carriages with fine, well-fed horses. The 
 little multitude of clerks and strugglers after 
 the belly-need trooped by him in fast strides, 
 every minute of their time being measured off 
 for each performance of the day. 
 
 The old burglar felt the thrill of their endeavor. 
 However little they might win with their aims,
 
 THE QUARRY 225 
 
 their efforts and their ambitions, that little was 
 surely sweet if fairly won. They shouted morn- 
 ing greetings to each other. The women laughed 
 and chatted together as they sailed along in 
 little clumps of femininity. 
 
 Styles had changed mightily since last his 
 eyes rested upon the form of a woman. He found 
 himself wondering at their manner of garb. They 
 were all dressed as little girls, it seemed to him. 
 Their short and tight skirts, their wide flower-and- 
 feather-trimmed hats, their stout shoes, the tops 
 showing, and their quick, spruce steps created in 
 him a mild amusement. 
 
 At the station he bought a ticket to New York 
 and boarded the first train. Two men of all the 
 crowd seemed to notice him. One of these got 
 aboard the train directly behind him while the 
 other entered the coach he had chosen by the 
 opposite door. 
 
 The train was an express and they were soon 
 at Forty-second Street, where, in the swarm of 
 thousands of men and women, many coaches 
 were unloading to the station platforms. 
 
 Shorter of stature than the average in the teem- 
 ing crowd, the head of Hawkins disappeared in
 
 226 THE QUARRY 
 
 a sea of hats and bonnets, but the two men who 
 had come with him from Ossining were never more 
 than ten feet away from him. 
 
 Leaving the Grand Central Station, Hawkins 
 struck to the east and boarded a downtown Third 
 Avenue Elevated train. He went all the way to 
 Park Row. 
 
 In one of the more widely read of the penny 
 newspapers he sought a means of finding the 
 woman he wanted. He entered the Park Row 
 newspaper office and, counting his cash, found 
 that he had two dollars and some odd change. 
 He inquired of a clerk and found that a " personal " 
 would cost him one dollar. He was given a pencil 
 and an advertisement blank. 
 
 His heart was crying out for the woman who 
 was lost in this teeming city of five millions. 
 Could he utter his cry in ten words? Could ten 
 words tell her the change that had come to him, 
 inform her that he had left the old life forever, 
 that he had come to take her in his arms and 
 comfort her and shelter her from further hurt and 
 harm? 
 
 For nearly an hour he labored over the task and 
 finally was compelled to ask the help of the clerk.
 
 THE QUARRY 227 
 
 He told the young man that he wanted to find 
 his wife. The personal was written and paid for, 
 and Bill departed. 
 
 As the probationer reached the sidewalk, the 
 two men who had followed him separated. One 
 kept on his heels and the other, with a look of 
 triumph in his eyes, hurried inside and to the ad- 
 vertising clerk. He showed a police badge. 
 
 " I'm Captain Kearney of Central Office," he 
 said briskly, " and I want to glimpse the personal 
 the old man just left with you." 
 
 The clerk produced it. 
 
 Kearney read it slowly: "Jennie Hawkins. 
 Send address this office. Want you, my wife." 
 
 The detective uttered a growl of disappoint- 
 ment as he handed back the slip of paper. 
 
 " Hell," he said to himself, " I thought he was 
 tipping Montgomery that he was out and that 
 the trail would be a short one." 
 
 He turned to the clerk again. 
 
 " Soon as you get an answer to that personal," 
 he instructed the young man, " telephone head- 
 quarters and ask for Captain Kearney. If I 
 ain't there the message will be delivered me. 
 See?"
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 IT is one of the palpable and grotesque facts 
 in the game of hide and seek between the 
 denizens of the underworld of New York and 
 the men of Central Office that the plain-clothes 
 man is as surely marked with his profession of 
 ferret as the traffic squad man is made evident 
 by his uniform and puttees. 
 
 The New York detective is conspicuous by his 
 commonplace garments, his derby or short- 
 brimmed felt hat, his forced nonchalance, his 
 hands, which seem always to get in his way and 
 to bother him, and his feet, which are generally 
 conspicuous to a painful degree. 
 
 If he is shadowing a man, he tries to affect the 
 air of a stranger, looking curiously about when 
 his quarry pauses or turns to spot him. If he is 
 engaged in pumping a crook over their whiskey 
 and water he indulges too greatly in the thieves' 
 slang and displays a cunning that is unwonted 
 among thieves. He does not possess and cannot
 
 THE QUARRY 229 
 
 possess, because of his inexperience, that thing 
 which the old criminal has the " Know." 
 There is no other name for this psychic possession 
 of the criminal, and criminological psychologists 
 have not gone so far in their studies and experi- 
 ments as to even realize its existence. 
 
 The " Know " in the hunted man is the same 
 instinct which all animals that have become ob- 
 jects of prey have developed. A lamb might be 
 devoured by a wolf in sheep's clothing but not a 
 fox. The criminal senses his enemy. Although he 
 may look the stolid brute, he is, in reality, a 
 creature of highly nervous organization. He is 
 ever on the alert, sleeps lightly, treads softly and 
 swiftly, and is argus-eyed. His ears are cocked 
 for the faintest sounds and his mind wide open for 
 the faintest hint of danger. It is only when he 
 becomes sodden with drink that he loses these 
 naturally developed gifts of the hunted. 
 
 Hawkins moved from the respectable, news- 
 paper end of Park Row to that section of the same 
 iron-pillared and track-covered highway which 
 melts into the Bowery. He had but little money 
 and he was hungry. 
 
 For five cents he could have entered one of a
 
 230 THE QUARRY 
 
 hundred and more saloons, had a glass of beer 
 and his fill of beans, bread and corned beef. But 
 he had learned his lesson from drink and he passed 
 these places, choosing a cheap restaurant, after 
 carefully studying the prices of its various dishes 
 displayed on a frame of dirty white oil-cloth in 
 black letters. 
 
 He found a seat in the rear of the place facing 
 the door. 
 
 Kearney's man had entered behind him and was 
 seated with his back to him. But he faced a mirror, 
 and he could see every move of the old probationer 
 he was shadowing. 
 
 The eyes of Hawkins shifted about the restau- 
 rant, taking in the dirty walls, tawdry pictures, 
 faded artificial flowers and the little signs pro- 
 claiming special dishes and their prices. For only 
 a second his eyes rested on the mirror, but it was 
 long enough. 
 
 Of the people crowded in the little place all save 
 one were busy reading the first editions of the 
 afternoon papers, eating or talking with one 
 another. The one exception was looking up- 
 ward into the mirror and Hawkins knew why, in- 
 stinctively.
 
 THE QUARRY 231 
 
 " A bull," he said to himself. 
 
 The glance at the mirrored face was enough 
 to impress it on his mind. If this detective was 
 shadowing him and not some other man, Hawkins 
 would know it in just a little while. 
 
 He ordered a plate of ham and beans and a cup 
 of coffee. Bread was served with it three thin 
 slices. He ate with a good appetite and paid the 
 waiter fifteen cents from his little store of money. 
 
 It had been his intention to go to the Herald 
 office and insert a reply to the personal from Mont- 
 gomery. He left the restaurant and continued his 
 way north on the Bowery to Third Avenue. He 
 went as far as Twenty-third Street and turned west. 
 
 At Fourth Avenue he entered the Metropolitan 
 building arcade, which runs through to Madison 
 Avenue and Madison Square. He had not as yet 
 turned about to make an attempt to find the 
 shadow and Kearney's man was congratulating 
 himself on having struck an easy job. 
 
 Once in the arcade of the building, Hawkins in- 
 creased his gait until he came to the wide Madison 
 Avenue entrance. Here the storm doors had been 
 put up in readiness for coming winter and the 
 heavy weather of the late fall. He pushed through
 
 232 THE QUARRY 
 
 the door but instead of continuing into the Avenue 
 he completed the circle and was back in the arcade. 
 He retraced his steps, passing and recognizing 
 the shadow, went to a boot-black stand and calmly 
 took a chair. 
 
 The shadow, surprised, at first thought that 
 this was a ruse of the man he was stalking to avoid 
 him, but when he saw Hawkins take the chair he 
 stood off and, under cover, told himself that his 
 task was still a simple one. 
 
 As a Greek boy rubbed and polished his shoes 
 Hawkins pondered how best to proceed next. 
 Had Kearney not uncovered his hand in the at- 
 tempt to bribe him to betray his friend, he would 
 have been puzzled to fathom the meaning of 
 this shadowing. Now, he understood why he 
 had been released from prison and why his steps 
 were being dogged. It was not mercy and kindness 
 that had been the motive of his deliverance. It 
 was police craft. Nevertheless, the old man lost 
 none of his sense of gratitude for having been 
 made free again. However sinister the purpose of 
 those who had brought about his liberation, he 
 was out on probation and to stay out as long as 
 he violated no law.
 
 THE QUARRY 233 
 
 The problem before him was to gain that pro- 
 bation by his own honest effort and not by being 
 made a Judas. His knowledge of detective meth- 
 ods, gained in evil days, now stood him in good 
 stead for a good cause. He knew that some time 
 during the late afternoon or night his shadow would 
 be relieved by another. If necessary, the man 
 following him would arrest him as a suspicious 
 character, take him to a station and hold him 
 just long enough to have his relief look him over 
 from under cover and then follow him. That he 
 would not be held for long, he knew very well. 
 The police wanted him free so that he could make 
 his way to his friend and guide them to their 
 quarry. 
 
 He was concerned chiefly in getting in print the 
 reply to Montgomery's personal. To manage 
 this best he would return to his old associates of the 
 underworld. Unwritten, the words of the brief 
 message would be passed along until they reached 
 the Herald office and found their way to type and 
 eventually to the man they were intended for. 
 
 His shoes were polished. He paid the Greek 
 boy and returned to the Bowery with his shadow.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 HAWKINS entered the " reading room " 
 of a lodging-house just north of Chatham 
 Square. One table, littered with cast- 
 off newspapers and three or four old and well- 
 thumbed magazines, was in the center of the 
 room. Around the walls were ranged chairs placed 
 as closely together as the seats on the average 
 New York park bench. 
 
 As he fumbled among the papers, his keen eyes 
 swept the faces of the down-and-outs who had been 
 able to pay for the shelter they would have during 
 the coming night. 
 
 Kearney's man followed him into the room 
 after a minute, pulled a newspaper from his pocket 
 and found a seat near a window. 
 
 The probationer expected some one, but he 
 was not among the men gathered here. He took 
 a paper and found a seat in the same row with 
 the detective.
 
 THE QUARRY 235 
 
 Without craning his neck and leaning forward 
 the detective could not watch Bill's movements. 
 Still, there was no way for Bill to leave the room 
 without being seen by him, and the detective 
 was satisfied with their relative positions. 
 
 The " Butcher," beside whom the probationer 
 had worked in the cutting room, had told him to 
 seek this spot if he needed any help. Generally 
 about noon the " Butcher's " friend " Boston Ed " 
 Fallon came there to get his mail and read the 
 papers after breakfast. A part of Ed's duties in 
 life was to keep up the underground communica- 
 tion between the outside world and the convicts 
 in Sing Sing. It was he who had sent in the cash 
 with which Montgomery was staked when he 
 made his getaway. Bill would know him by a 
 birthmark under his drooping left eye. 
 
 The noon hour passed tediously for Kearney's 
 man, but comfortably for Bill. He read paper 
 after paper, enjoying every line of the news of 
 the world from which he had been shut off so long. 
 All the while, his keen ears and his quick eyes were 
 ready in case the " Butcher's " friend entered 
 the room. He was in no hurry to eat again. One 
 meal a day would be enough until he found work.
 
 236 THE QUARRY 
 
 With plenty of water, which would cost him noth- 
 ing, he could go on half a meal a day. 
 
 Toward one o'clock " Boston Ed," a middle- 
 aged man, dressed as a laborer, entered the room 
 and went to the table, where he fumbled among 
 the papers and sized up the other guests and 
 " sponges " of the Chatham Square lodging house. 
 He uncovered the headquarters man in a glance 
 from under his heavily-lidded eyes and flashed 
 a signal with a look to Bill, whose eyes he saw 
 peering knowingly at him from over his paper. 
 
 Bill's ringers began to move and, without ap- 
 pearing to look his way, the " Butcher 's " birth- 
 marked friend read a message in the deaf and 
 dumb language, telling him to stand by for a 
 talk. 
 
 He chose a paper and a seat, placing the table 
 between him and Kearney's man. With his 
 hands in his lap, " Boston Ed " could work his 
 fingers without the detective reading his messages, 
 should he, by chance, know the sign code. 
 
 Had the man-hunter the skill, intelligence and 
 experience of the hunted, he would not have al- 
 lowed himself to be made a point in a triangle 
 so skilfully drawn to his disadvantage.
 
 THE QUARRY 237 
 
 " The ' Butch ' sent me," signalled Bill. " I'm 
 just out." 
 
 " Is the bull shadowing you ? " asked Ed's 
 fingers. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What's doing? " 
 
 " He's following me to find an escape." 
 
 " What you want? " 
 
 " Get a personal in the Herald for me." 
 
 " Shoot it." 
 
 "Here it is: ' Kid. O. K. December. 
 Bill.' " 
 
 " I got you." 
 
 " Repeat it." 
 
 " ' Kid. O. K. December. Bill.' " 
 
 " I'm broke." 
 
 " I'll pay." 
 
 " Thanks." 
 
 " What you doing next? " 
 
 " Try to shake the shadow." 
 
 "Then what?" 
 
 " Hunt for my wife, Jennie Hawkins. Adver- 
 tised for her but the bulls will watch the news- 
 paper offices." 
 
 " Jennie Hawkins? "
 
 238 THE QUARRY 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Are you Bill Hawkins ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The man with the birthmark smiled and pre- 
 tended to read his paper for a moment. 
 
 " Bill," he resumed. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Shake the 'bull and meet me in Corlear's 
 Hook Park. I'll take you to her." 
 
 Bill's hands dropped in his lap. He paled and 
 then flushed. 
 
 Was he to find Jennie so easily ? He could hardly 
 believe it. And how would he find her? Had she 
 another man? Was she true to him? But there 
 was a pleasant smile playing about the lips of the 
 birthmarked man that hinted of good news. 
 
 " How is she? " he asked. 
 
 " Fine and a good woman." 
 
 " Thank God," said Bill to himself and then, 
 with his fingers: " I'll meet you in Deefy's saloon. 
 When?" 
 
 " Any night between ten and twelve." 
 
 Bill rose from his seat and left the room, his 
 shadow at his heels.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HAWKINS had the entire afternoon in 
 which to wear out the patience of his 
 shadow. 
 
 He walked south on the Bowery to Park Row 
 once more and stood leaning on a railing at the 
 brink of the excavations for the new Municipal 
 Building near the old Brooklyn bridge. He 
 watched the antlike droves of men digging in the 
 great hole for an hour. 
 
 The shadow was hungry by that time and his 
 heels were feeling the wear and tear of the trail, 
 but Bill's only pause for refreshment was made 
 under the bridge, where he gulped a three-cent 
 glass of milk. 
 
 The doors of Father Evers' little red church 
 in Duane Street were open and the old probationer 
 entered and found quiet and peace for an hour, 
 as he half knelt in a pew. He felt as if he wanted 
 to pray and the desire itself was a prayer of pro- 
 found sincerity and beauty.
 
 240 THE QUARRY 
 
 He had nothing to ask of his Master save His 
 continued mercy. He had much to be grateful 
 for; his deliverance from prison and the joyful 
 news that his wife was a good woman and not 
 the fallen creature Kearney had said she was. 
 
 The hour of solemn thought in this little temple 
 in the heart of busy, downtown New York re- 
 freshed him mightily and when he left the little 
 red church it was with a lighter heart and a lighter 
 step. 
 
 Hawkins made his way to West Street and the 
 North River wharves. Although he was old and 
 bent, he still had abundant strength in his long 
 arms and in his massive shoulders. He went 
 from pier to pier looking for a chance to put in a 
 couple of hours at work. He found the chance at 
 the foot of Warren Street, where he was given 
 three hours' work unloading trucks. 
 
 The old probationer pulled off his coat and 
 folded it carefully. He rolled up his sleeves and 
 went at the task before him. The shadow stood 
 off in the distance, wearing out his heels and his 
 patience and counting the minutes to the time 
 when he might conscientiously devise a means 
 of getting relief.
 
 THE QUARRY 241 
 
 At half-past five o'clock Hawkins was paid one 
 dollar by his foreman. He slipped into his coat 
 and started away to give the hound behind him a 
 chance to show his ability in shadowing. 
 
 The rush hour was on and Manhattan's millions 
 were packing subways, elevated and surface cars, 
 and crowding the bridges. The skyscrapers 
 gushed forth seemingly endless streams of hu- 
 manity. The sidewalks overflowed and the streets 
 were filled from curb to curb. Below ground, the 
 subway platforms were crowded, until those on 
 the edges were in constant peril. 
 
 Broadway, Nassau, William, Spruce, Fulton 
 and Broad, Exchange Place, Wall and the other 
 narrow highways in the financial district all 
 contributed to the jam that found an outlet 
 in the space in front of the World and Tribune 
 buildings. 
 
 Into this space, filled with flocking men and 
 women, Hawkins made his way, dodging to right 
 and left as he traveled across the northward cur- 
 rent. His shadow had to close in on him to keep 
 him in sight. They were not more than three feet 
 apart when Hawkins entered the World building. 
 
 The fox passed through the building to North
 
 242 THE QUARRY 
 
 William Street and disappeared in the gloom of the 
 third riverward arch of the old bridge. The hound 
 plunged after him. They emerged from under the 
 bridge at Rose Street and the fox turned south 
 to Frankfort Street. Turning to the east, he 
 started as if for the river, hanging close to the 
 bridge arches. Suddenly the fox disappeared! 
 
 The hound had just left Rose Street and had 
 turned east also. Not seeing his quarry, he 
 hurried his steps, keeping his eyes shifting from 
 one side of Frankfort Street to the other. 
 
 Two of the great arches of masonry were 
 bricked in for storage purposes. The third was 
 open. 
 
 The hound peered into the fast-gathering shad- 
 ows and at the other end of the arch noticed a 
 building. It looked like a blind alley but it was 
 not. He was peering into a veritable appendix 
 of the city's system of highways. It was Hague 
 Street, a short, twisted path about which property 
 had been laid out when New York was New 
 Amsterdam. It ran like the letter " S " from the 
 bridge arch to Pearl Street, which is as crooked 
 as the crookedest Tammany politician. 
 
 The fox knew the ground, the old " Swamp "
 
 THE QUARRY 243 
 
 section, where are the places of business for the 
 hide and leather merchants, where there is always 
 the disagreeable smell of wet hides and rotting 
 hairs and where the buildings are old-fashioned. 
 
 The hound gave a last glance up and down 
 Frankfort Street and then plunged into Hague. 
 He ran to the end of the arch and saw a short and 
 , sharp curve. He ran to the bend of this and saw 
 the second curve. He ran to the bend of the 
 second curve and saw Pearl Street, twisting like 
 a python, crowded with homeward-hurrying thou- 
 sands and made darker in the dusk of falling eve- 
 ning because of the shadows of the elevated struc- 
 ture and the great bridge overhead. 
 
 The fox was gone! 
 
 The hound was in the tangle of New Chambers, 
 Cherry, Oak, Madison, Pearl, Rose and Vande- 
 water Streets. He ran to right and left, peering 
 into doorways, darting into saloons and out again, 
 hoping against hope that the lost trail might be 
 picked up again. 
 
 The fox was safe on his way. He had doubled 
 on his tracks and was back in North William 
 Street, only a few hundred feet from his pursuer 
 but hopelessly lost to him.
 
 244 THE QUARRY 
 
 In the William Street arch of the bridge is set 
 an open stair leading to the tracks above. It is 
 no wider than the door of an ordinary room. The 
 fox entered and ascended the stone steps. He was 
 back in the swarming, righting multitude of people, 
 swallowed up by it. He let the rush carry him 
 and he was swept aboard a car bound for Brook- 
 lyn. 
 
 As the car passed the last arch and struck the 
 span high above the river and the pier tops, the 
 hound below was running about, whimpering 
 with distress and wondering what Captain Kearney 
 would say to him when he reported. 
 
 The fox left the car in Brooklyn and walked to 
 the Catherine Street ferry, turning in his tracks 
 occasionally to assure himself that his pursuer had 
 been really outwitted. He recrossed the East 
 River by way of the ferry and then struck through 
 the familiar lower East Side of Manhattan until 
 he reached Corlear's Hook Park. Here he found 
 " Deefy's " saloon, so called because the owner 
 was deaf and dumb and his patronage was from 
 those similarly afflicted. It was a place of silent 
 refreshment. 
 
 " Deefy's " stands there to-day, one of the
 
 THE QUARRY 245 
 
 quaintest places in one of the quaintest corners 
 of a city, as interesting to even the casual ob- 
 server as London was to the great novelist who 
 wrote of London's streets and London's poor. 
 
 The probationer entered the saloon by the 
 " Family " entrance and took his seat at a table 
 in a tiny room back of the bar. In the sign lan- 
 guage he ordered, from a deaf and dumb waiter, 
 a bowl of stew and a cup of coffee. 
 
 He found a newspaper and made himself com- 
 fortable in this secure nook until the coming of 
 " Boston Ed."
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 PROMPTLY at eleven o'clock the man with 
 the birthmark under his left eye showed his 
 face in the door of the little room back of 
 Deefy's bar. 
 
 " Bill," he whispered, a wide grin spreading 
 over his homely and splotched countenance. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " She's outside." 
 
 Hawkins jumped to his feet. 
 
 " Set still, Bill," commanded " Boston Ed." 
 " I got it fixed with Deefy. You two can have 
 the room all to yourselves for awhile. He under- 
 stands. You can talk all you want, Bill. I'll 
 keep an eye on the door and sip a couple of bran- 
 nigans." 
 
 He withdrew his head and in a few moments a 
 woman was shoved into the little room and the 
 door banged tight behind her. 
 
 The sunken eyes of the old probationer seemed 
 to be suddenly covered with a haze. Tears flowed
 
 THE QUARRY 247 
 
 down his cheeks. His long arms were out- 
 stretched. 
 
 "Jennie!" 
 
 The woman, a slender, tired creature, with the 
 marks of years of physical toil upon her, sobbed. 
 She tried to advance to the outstretched arms but 
 her legs refused to move. 
 
 " Bill! Oh, my God, Bill! At last! At last! " 
 
 The words came from her brokenly, as the 
 breast under her plain, black waist heaved con- 
 vulsively. 
 
 Her body began to sway and he sprang to her 
 and took her in his arms. 
 
 When the joy of this world-weary couple, 
 sadly mingled with grief, had been spent, they sat 
 close together at the table clasping each other's 
 hands. 
 
 " I'm a different man, Jennie," said Hawkins. 
 " I'm a different man. The faith of God has come 
 to me." 
 
 " How'd you get it, Bill ? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 " They sent up a boy for life and he was in- 
 nocent," he told her. " The boy never done a 
 wrong thing. The cops put it on him. But he 
 never flickered and he prayed every morning and
 
 248 THE QUARRY 
 
 night. I helped him escape and now he wants me. 
 I'm going to find him and find out if he needs any 
 more help." 
 
 She pressed his hands in her own when he 
 paused. 
 
 " I thought of our own boy who would 'a' been 
 his age," he went on. " I got to love him he 
 was that kind and gentle. He was always think- 
 ing of his own poor, old mother and she died with- 
 out seeing him after they sent him up." 
 
 " Poor lad." 
 
 " Yes, but he was a brave one." 
 
 " And they gave you a probation, Bill? " 
 
 " Yes, but only so's they could follow me and 
 get the boy." 
 
 He suppressed a desire to rip out an oath 
 against his old enemies. 
 
 " But how about you, Jennie? " he asked. 
 
 " I have been working right along, Bill," she 
 replied. " One time I thought I would blow up but 
 somehow I got my strength and pulled out all 
 right. There was plenty of men after me when I 
 was still pretty, Bill, but I been true to you, old 
 man. I been true to you, my Bill." 
 
 He patted her thin shoulders.
 
 THE QUARRY 249 
 
 " When I come out of Sing Sing after my first 
 bit I heard you was going down the line and I got 
 sick and turned away from you, Jennie." 
 
 " There's always people who want to see a 
 helpless woman helped to hell," she said bitterly. 
 " I never done nothing wrong, Bill. I was tempted 
 when I was hungry and just out of Bellevue but 
 I stuck out on the level, old man. So help me 
 God, I did." 
 
 " Jennie, if you'd gone plumb to the middle 
 of hell I'd come for you," he said. One of his long 
 arms was about her shoulder. She rested her head 
 in its bend. 
 
 " You tired, Jennie? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, Bill." 
 
 " You want to go home? " 
 
 " Yes; let's go home. I gotta place ready for 
 you." 
 
 His eyes glistened with love for the woman who 
 was again to be his helpmeet. 
 
 " I'm afraid to, Jennie," he told her after a 
 pause. ' The bull's been after me all day." 
 
 " When can you come, Bill? " 
 
 " Soon's I see the young man. I gotta reach him 
 first and then I'll send for you or come for you."
 
 250 THE QUARRY 
 
 " Is he far away? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How you going to get there? " 
 
 " Work my way." 
 
 She loosened her waist and pulled out a roll of 
 bills. 
 
 " I brought this for you, Bill," she said. " I 
 know'd you would want some. I got six hundred 
 in the bank now and there's two hundred." 
 
 He hesitated about taking the money. 
 
 " You gotta take it, Bill," she said. " It will 
 bring you back to me sooner and you can pay 
 it back in no time." 
 
 He took a hundred dollars of the money. 
 
 " Boston Ed " tapped on the door and then 
 poked in his face. 
 
 " How's the old folks? " he asked. 
 
 They smiled at him in gratitude for his kindness. 
 
 " The party breaking up? " 
 
 " Yes; you get Jennie home safe for me; I 
 gotta slope out of town," said Bill. 
 
 Husband and wife embraced and the old pro- 
 bationer slipped from the room, made his way 
 through the gesticulating deaf and dumb patrons 
 of the saloon and disappeared into the night.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 IN his mountain refuge there were hours of 
 loneliness which beset John Nelson. He real- 
 ized that the more he achieved in life and the 
 greater grew his love for Molly Bryan the more 
 terrible would be the reckoning for him should 
 the police ever corner him. The oppressiveness 
 of these hours became such that he looked about 
 for a mental occupation that would serve to drive 
 from his thoughts the fear that seemed to fasten 
 on him with tighter grip as the weeks passed. 
 
 In the Dark Corner he was the only man with 
 money and sufficient warmth and food and shelter 
 sound enough to make actual physical existence 
 bearable in winter. The poverty of the mountain 
 families was but little short of the poverty of 
 despair. Many of them lived through the sea- 
 sons with never the possession of money, getting 
 their food from their patches of open ground and 
 their clothes by trading. 
 
 The majority of the people about him could not
 
 252 THE QUARRY 
 
 read. Some of them had never heard of Christ. As 
 he had turned to the poor in the mill section of 
 Greenville, he turned to the mountaineers of the 
 Dark Corner. With one of his negro servants 
 he made excursions from his castle, going from 
 cabin to cabin, finding out what was needed most 
 and giving freely. On these Samaritan trips he 
 carried a pocket Bible and when he could find an 
 excuse for so doing he would read to them the 
 message that packs the Book from Genesis to 
 Revelation, that the mercy of God shall endure 
 forever. 
 
 The bearded hermit was always welcome. He 
 would not drink of the liquor they made in their 
 hidden stills and at first they thought this strange. 
 They soon found that he was a man of peace and 
 good-will and when they realized that his motive 
 was unselfish love for mankind, he grew so in 
 their esteem that he was able to end many of their 
 bitter family quarrels. 
 
 No law reached these people of the mountains 
 save when some daring revenue spy would come 
 in disguise as a pedler and raid their stills. The 
 arrest and conviction of the head of a family 
 meant a woman and children left on the mountain-
 
 THE QUARRY 253 
 
 sides, sometimes to starve. Nelson tided such 
 families through the period of imprisonment of 
 their protectors. As he thus exerted himself in 
 their behalf, his words carried more weight with 
 them and his simple doctrine of kindness and 
 mercy began to have telling effect. 
 
 On the edge of his estate he built a pine church 
 with a tiny spire tipping the tree line. Here he 
 provided a pulpit for the mission priests and cir- 
 cuit riders who traveled the mountain paths. 
 Here he made a place for the Word of God and 
 not for the word of a Diet or a Conference. 
 
 The people were as primitive and as unworldly 
 as children. They never stole, they never lied 
 and they knew nothing of cheating. They sold 
 the corn liquor they made without paying the 
 government tax because it was the only product 
 they could get from the grain that would pay 
 them enough to keep their children alive. They 
 were too poor to distill in quantities large enough 
 to bring them in sufficient returns to meet the 
 revenue demand. 
 
 In such good work Nelson realized the true 
 value of wealth. To give to others was the great 
 privilege he had gained by his skill and the mas-
 
 254 THE QUARRY 
 
 tery of his craft. The simple devotion of the 
 people he helped repaid him a thousandfold for 
 his humane efforts. 
 
 The snow of the first winter in his mountain 
 home began to fly and Nelson made a trip into the 
 city to secure the copies of the Herald he had com- 
 missioned a newsdealer to save for him. He spent 
 part of a day with Mr. Bryan and Lansing and 
 then, the floor of his car thick with the accumu- 
 lated newspapers, hastened back to his castle. 
 
 That night, before a log fire in his study, he 
 spread the copies of the Herald on a large table 
 and arranged them in order of their issue. Far 
 into the night he scanned the personal columns 
 until his eyes ached and he was compelled to re- 
 tire. 
 
 The next night he resumed his search and, with 
 a shout of delight, discovered the reply of Haw- 
 kins: 
 
 " Kid. O. K. December. Bill." 
 
 The old convict had managed in some way to 
 get his release from prison. He was coming to 
 him, he, of all the men who could help him, the 
 only man he could trust with his secret. Into
 
 THE QUARRY 255 
 
 Bill's hands he would give the wealth he had ac- 
 quired, give it freely, gladly, that he might spend 
 it in the hunt for the man whose arrest and con- 
 viction would take from him the disgrace put 
 upon him by the law that had worked abortively. 
 
 Hope that had practical reason back of it filled 
 him. Molly was nearer to him than she had ever 
 been since the day he first saw her sweet face 
 and heard her lovely voice. He felt as if he could 
 go to her even then, for he was filled with con- 
 fidence newly born. 
 
 With Bill amply supplied with money and ex- 
 ploring the underworld for the real murderer, 
 he and Molly might become married. By early 
 spring he would finish his most important inven- 
 tion, a new knitting machine that would replace 
 those already made. He would put up a knitting 
 mill in conjunction with the textile mills and have 
 his own plant. He could bring Molly to his castle 
 until the day came when Bill would bring in his 
 quarry. 
 
 Molly and her father had made the trip to his 
 home and workshop once during the previous 
 summer. Nelson had kept sacred the chair she had 
 used. A handkerchief she had left on his working
 
 256 THE QUARRY 
 
 desk he allowed to remain there undisturbed save 
 when he would pick it up and press it to his lips. 
 
 He was still holding the paper in his hands 
 and dreaming of love and happiness and content 
 when the telephone rang. It was nine o'clock. 
 He picked up the receiver eagerly. 
 
 " Yes," he said, as he recognized her voice. 
 
 " It is nearing Christmas time," she told him, 
 a plaintive note in her voice. 
 
 " I must shop for the mountain children," he told 
 her. " I had almost forgotten." 
 
 " You are coming into Greenville, then ? " 
 
 "Yes; I must." 
 
 " You will need more than a single day." 
 
 He tried to protest that his work was pressing. 
 
 " You are going to stay with us for a good part 
 of the holidays," she told him decisively. " Father, 
 mother, Jim and I all insist and we will not take 
 a refusal. You must start next Wednesday 
 morning early and I shall meet you in my motor 
 on Paris Mountain." 
 
 The thought of being near her for an entire 
 day, for two days or more, perhaps, thrilled him 
 and tempted him to leave his hiding place. The 
 peace of her father's household, the charm and
 
 THE QUARRY 257 
 
 grace of life there, the music in the evenings with 
 the logs burning and the bright silver winking 
 back to the flames, his share in blissful domesticity, 
 all these things flashed through his mind. 
 
 " Then, if I must," he told her, " I shall be on 
 Paris Mountain next Wednesday." 
 
 His hands trembled as he replaced the receiver 
 and picked up his square and compass. He tried 
 to begin work on his plans but gave it up. 
 
 In every tone of every word she had spoken over 
 the telephone there was a message of love that 
 he could not mistake. Even a little sigh had come 
 to him trembling through the thread of wire strung 
 over the mountains. 
 
 Her hand was his for the asking. Her heart was 
 already his. Within his grasp was the greatest 
 happiness God could give a man, the right to 
 love and hold forever a pure and beautiful woman 
 who loved him. 
 
 He paced the floor of the room, his mind filled 
 with an exquisite dream-life. She would share 
 this house with him, be its mistress, bring to it 
 the subtle fragrance and sweetness which she 
 alone possessed. In winter and in times of storm 
 her smile would fill his home with a radiance
 
 258 THE QUARRY 
 
 sweeter and more blessed than the sunshine of 
 spring. 
 
 She would come tiptoeing to his door as he 
 worked with his machinery. She would look in 
 and he would stop at his task long enough to 
 welcome her and to sip of the sweetness of her 
 lips and feel the warmth of her love as her arms 
 clasped his neck. He sank into her chair and 
 picked up the handkerchief, a filmy bit of linen, 
 pressing it to his lips. 
 
 Ten o'clock passed and eleven struck as he sat 
 in silent and happy dreaming. Suddenly the 
 handkerchief dropped from his hands and his face 
 showed white as a sheet of paper in the light of his 
 student's lamp. 
 
 He had heard some one moving outside the 
 house. There had been the crackle of frozen 
 snow. 
 
 His three black servants were far off in their 
 cottage for the night. Who was this marauder? 
 
 Again came the sound. Some one was surely 
 walking beneath his windows. 
 
 Nelson dropped to his hands and knees, crept 
 to the wall and turned an electric switch, plunging 
 the house in darkness from cellar to attic.
 
 THE QUARRY 259 
 
 Against the many windows of his castle showed 
 the snow-laden boughs of the trees in a glow that 
 came from the reflection of the white pall cover- 
 ing the earth. 
 
 He felt for his wallet, which held the money he 
 was to use in the event of flight becoming neces- 
 sary; it was in his pocket. A step and he was at 
 his desk. He opened a drawer softly. In his 
 right hand showed the dark outline of a blue- 
 steel revolver. His dreams of love had vanished. 
 He was again the escaped convict making a fight 
 for the liberty he had stolen. 
 
 The snow was not deep enough to impede his 
 motor. He hurried to the secret entrance to his 
 garage, opened the masked door and stood waiting 
 at the head of a flight of narrow stairs.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 AS Nelson stood in the darkness of the room, 
 holding his breath, he felt the weight of the 
 pistol in his right hand and the thought 
 came to him that should there be only that one 
 man Michael Kearney he would be tempted 
 to slay. 
 
 On the blue nose of his weapon was screwed a 
 Maxim silencer. The voice of death would be 
 dropped to a whisper. The end of the sleuth 
 would never be known by the outside world. 
 
 Before him loomed the brown horror of a cell 
 and sunless, skyless days. The heart of Molly 
 Bryan would be broken as the heart of his mother 
 had been broken. 
 
 If he killed would it not be in self-defense and in 
 the highest and fullest meaning of the phrase? 
 There are things worse than death. 
 
 There was a slight sound against the side of the 
 house beneath the window he faced. Whoever 
 this was, coming as a thief in the night, would
 
 THE QUARRY 261 
 
 soon show his head over the sill. The weight of 
 the revolver in his hand seemed to increase. 
 
 Not a man among his neighbors would have 
 hesitated to slay under the circumstances and to 
 shout with triumph at the fall of his enemy. Not 
 a man among them would do other than rally 
 to his aid, even though a great company of ene- 
 mies encompassed him. But he was no man to 
 take human life. He realized it suddenly. Mois- 
 ture exuded from his fingers and blurred the steel 
 of his weapon in the dark. 
 
 He had said to himself that no one would know 
 of the death of the relentless hound that had pur- 
 sued him from a pit of despond to Arcady. God 
 and his conscience would know it! 
 
 He crossed the room on his toes rapidly and re- 
 placed the weapon in his desk. 
 
 The terrible injustice that had blasted his life 
 at twenty-one, that had scarred and branded him 
 forever, that had sent his sweet, patient, little 
 mother to a sorrowful death and that had penned 
 him in a cage for the first five years of his maturity, 
 had drawn him closer to his Maker. 
 
 He might have been called a coward but his 
 sorrows, his anxieties, his flight and his struggle
 
 262 THE QUARRY 
 
 to keep himself pure and true, even in this moment 
 of extreme torture of fear, had found him holding 
 to and trusting in his faith in God. Unarmed, he 
 stood at the little door, poised for flight. 
 
 A sound came from the window-sill, and was 
 repeated. It came steadily for a few seconds and 
 ended with a snap, as the latch over the window 
 sash gave under the upward pressure of a jimmy. 
 The sash was raised, slowly, cautiously. 
 
 A man's head, covered with a black, slouch hat, 
 showed over the sill, then a pair of shoulders, and 
 a long-armed creature was in the room, landing as 
 lightly on his toes as if he had been a trained 
 trapeze performer. The man was not Kearney! 
 
 Nelson's eyes, accustomed to the darkness, 
 recognized the heavy shoulders and the squat 
 figure. 
 
 " Bill! " he whispered, repressing a cry of joy 
 that rose from his heart. 
 
 " Kid! " came the answer. 
 
 They strode to each other and clasped hands. 
 
 " Is it safe, boy? " asked the old burglar. " Is 
 there any one else in the house? " 
 
 " Not a soul." 
 
 " Thank God."
 
 THE QUARRY 263 
 
 " Come to the top floor; it will be even safer 
 there." 
 
 Nelson took the old man to the attic, drew the 
 blinds and switched on a light. 
 
 He looked at the old convict for a moment and 
 then placed his arms about his shoulders as would 
 a son embracing a father after long years of sep- 
 aration. He remembered his bleeding fingers as 
 he toiled in the dark in their cell, making the 
 gray suit of clothes; he remembered the words of 
 comfort his lips had spoken, when he received 
 news of the death of his mother, and of his 
 sacrifice for him when he took all the blame 
 for the possession of the clothes he had made 
 so futilely. 
 
 Bill stood in the glare of the light, scanning the 
 face of the younger man, the man whose prayers 
 had inspired him and from whose lips had come 
 that old, humane expression of Christian charity 
 and compassion: " It wasn't her fault! " 
 
 " Boy," said the old probationer, " I come to 
 you because I knew you needed me. That hound 
 at headquarters turned me loose so that he could 
 follow me and get you." 
 
 Nelson started.
 
 264 THE QUARRY 
 
 " But don't worry," Hawkins assured him, 
 " for I'm an old fox and hard to follow." 
 
 " Why did you come in by the window? " 
 
 " It was the safest way," explained Bill. " Al- 
 though I felt certain that no one was shadowing 
 me, I could not be dead sure. So I thought I'd 
 come in as a burglar and if there was any shadow 
 after me, he'd think I was back in the old game. 
 If I was caught, they'd get me for the old sin. 
 The shadow wouldn't know that John Nelson 
 was Jim Montgomery." 
 
 Hawkins dropped into a chair, looked about 
 the room and began studying the bars, weights 
 and trapezes. 
 
 " Them things? " he asked, with the wave of a 
 hand. 
 
 " I work with them every day and have changed 
 my measurements," explained Nelson. " I am 
 taller and broader and my arms and legs are 
 longer." 
 
 Hawkins nodded. 
 
 " I doubt if they'd recognize you," he said. 
 
 " How did you find me? " asked Nelson. " I 
 was afraid to put a name in the personal." 
 
 " After I reached Greenville, it didn't take me
 
 THE QUARRY 265 
 
 long to hear about John Nelson," he replied. " I 
 mingled with the machinists as a laborer, heard 
 about your inventions and success and about your 
 work with the poor people. I knew you were 
 Nelson. But I didn't dare send you a note or 
 get in touch with you in the daylight. I been 
 hunted too long to run any chances. When I 
 found out where your place was, I traveled on 
 foot. I got a bed and lodging in a cabin two miles 
 away. As soon as everybody was asleep, I slipped 
 out of the cabin and here I am." 
 
 They were both silent for a moment. 
 
 " I know what you thinking about, Kid," said 
 Hawkins finally. 
 
 " The guilty man," Nelson said slowly. 
 
 " You want me to try to get him." 
 
 " Yes; I have plenty of money now but I did 
 not dare hire detectives." 
 
 " They couldn't get him after ten years." 
 
 " Can any one find him? " 
 
 Bill felt the anxiety and eagerness, the hunger 
 for a real hope, in Nelson's voice. 
 
 " If any one can get him I'm the one," he re- 
 plied slowly. " I'm gonna get him, too. I gotta 
 get him, boy. I owe you something more than a
 
 266 THE QUARRY 
 
 few years out of ' stir.' ' His voice quavered with 
 emotion. 
 
 " You put a God in my brain and heart," he 
 went on. " You made a soul come to life in my 
 old body." In his sunken eyes there was a luster 
 that made beneficent the deep-lined face. " I 
 found my old girl," he continued, after a pause 
 in which he mastered his feelings. " You made 
 me want to find her and, thank God, I found her a 
 good and patient woman and glad to have her 
 man back. I'm some different, Kid. I'm some 
 different and I owe it to you. I'm going after 
 that man who let you be sent up for life and I'm 
 going to get him and drag him to the office of 
 the district attorney, if I get there with my head 
 caved in." 
 
 The old man had risen from his chair. The 
 fire in him had flashed into life again, and he looked 
 as strong as an old ring warrior. 
 
 " What time is it? " he demanded suddenly. 
 
 Nelson looked at his watch. 
 
 " Half after midnight," he said. 
 
 " I must beat it back to the cabin. I want to 
 keep you covered right." 
 
 Nelson took his wallet from his pocket.
 
 THE QUARRY 267 
 
 " Here is plenty of money, Bill," he said. 
 " Take it and use it. It isn't a loan or a gift. 
 What is mine is yours. Spend all that is necessary. 
 I am a rich man. You were the means of my 
 achieving wealth." 
 
 " Guess I'll need some of it," the probationer 
 said. " I'll take it, anyhow, and when all comes 
 out right I'll account to you for it. Then my old 
 woman and I will come down here and work for 
 you." 
 
 Nelson placed a hand affectionately on the 
 old man's shoulder. 
 
 " Does a son let his father work for him? " 
 he asked. " No! I'll work for you, Bill, many 
 years, God willing." 
 
 They left the attic and from the dark room 
 below Bill Hawkins stepped to the window-sill 
 and in a few moments was in the snow-covered 
 road leading from the grounds.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 A STORM, springing from Carib seas, had 
 swept northward along the Florida and 
 Georgia shores. Down from the north 
 came the tail-end of a big blizzard; the two met 
 off the Carolina coast. 
 
 The two big winds were split asunder, each 
 into two shrieking, invisible, routed armies of the 
 air. The left flank of the storm from the north 
 shot oceanward and parallel with the right flank 
 of the howling gale from the Caribs. The left 
 flank of the tropical storm went westward and to- 
 ward the under hills of the Blue Ridge, sweeping 
 beside the right flank of the northern tempest. 
 
 In the wild rush of temperatures seeking normal 
 levels, heat and cold mingled in the South Carolina 
 mountains and a deluge of rain resulted. 
 
 Mighty Caesar's Head, King's Mountain and 
 Paris Mountain were washed clear of snow by the 
 torrent. The wind skirled in leafless boughs and
 
 THE QUARRY 269 
 
 branches, howled through ravines and gorges 
 in mountainsides and the flood made the Saluda 
 pick up its bed and rush away even as did the man 
 who lay ill and was made well by a miracle. 
 
 The mountain roads were torn and ripped by 
 the flood; they gave up the frost in them and the 
 red clay was turned to a series of twisted ribbons. 
 
 With the clatter of a dozen rapid-fire guns came 
 a low-swung automobile with unusually heavy 
 tires, high mud guards and huge oil tank toward 
 the crest of Paris Mountain from the west. A 
 screen of mud and water half obscured the driver. 
 Big goggles hid his eyes. Occasionally he would 
 lift a hand from the wheel and scrape the mud 
 from them or dash it from his iron-gray beard. 
 
 On the top of the mountain, standing in a run- 
 about type of machine, a girl waited. Her left 
 hand shaded her eyes as she peered down the 
 mountainside, watching the oncoming car, and 
 she steadied her slight form by grasping the steer- 
 ing gear. 
 
 She had torn a racing mask from her face and it 
 lay, caked with red clay, on the driver's seat 
 behind her. Her abundant hair had fallen from 
 its fastenings and the wind played with it as a
 
 270 THE QUARRY 
 
 great cat would play with a loose hank of golden 
 yarn. 
 
 The onrushing motor made the crest of the 
 mountain with the heavy lurch of a great beast 
 in attack, came to a stop and shivered, sending 
 flecks of mud shooting to right and left as the 
 driver pulled himself from the wheel seat. 
 
 Molly Bryan lifted her right hand high in the 
 air in the unconscious salute of ancient times. 
 
 Stripping himself of great coat and goggles, and 
 tossing them into his machine, John Nelson hurried 
 to her. 
 
 " I saw you when you started down Glassy 
 Mountain," she said. Her face was pale. " I 
 did not know whether you would make it safely." 
 Her left hand went to her heart. 
 
 " I was afraid that you might be hurt," she 
 added. 
 
 He looked up into her eyes and saw the loving 
 concern in them. 
 
 His beard was splashed with clay. In his eyes 
 was the effulgence of the stars. He had come, 
 perilously coursing up and down the mountains, 
 to ask her aid in buying Christmas gifts, in the 
 shops of the little city nestling below them, for
 
 THE QUARRY 271 
 
 the little children of the poor in the Dark Corner. 
 He was the unconscious instrument of one of the 
 Beatitudes, " Blessed are the poor." 
 
 The look in her eyes, the trembling of the hand 
 she extended to him, the quaver in her soft voice, 
 the quick flush that replaced the pallor of her 
 cheeks as she read the love message in his look, 
 gave him the hint that she expected his tongue to 
 utter the thoughts that rilled his mind. 
 
 But he held back the words. He was still 
 master of his tongue, but no man with love in his 
 heart, in every fiber of his being can master his 
 soul. He was not certain that the time had come 
 when he might tell her with his lips how he loved 
 her. 
 
 It was sunset but there was no setting of the 
 sun, for the storm had not wholly passed. The 
 clouds in the west piled in great castles and turrets 
 and walls without color, a somber city for some 
 mighty lord in the land of phantasy. 
 
 He held up a hand to her. She took it and 
 started to step from her car. Her heel slipped on 
 the wet running board and she fell against his 
 breast. 
 
 Her head lay on his shoulder and, with the
 
 272 THE QUARRY 
 
 world far below them and the clouds lowering 
 about them, their lips met in the kiss of betrothal. 
 
 With Molly Bryan's kiss on his lips and sweet- 
 ening his life, Nelson found himself on the other 
 side of the chasm he had shrunk from with dread 
 in his heart. 
 
 The thought that his staunch friend, the old 
 convict, was off on the hunt for the man he dared 
 not himself seek brought him a measure of assur- 
 ance for his still troubling conscience. 
 
 Then, too, Molly took total possession of him 
 and banished from his mind all concern except 
 the moment's concern. He felt the warmth of her 
 sweet woman's body and its soft pressure against 
 his, the burn and tingle of her flushed cheeks. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bryan were anxiously await- 
 ing them when their machines swung into the 
 broad road leading through the estate to the 
 mansion which crowned it. 
 
 " Here's Santa Claus," Molly shouted to her 
 parents. " And I am Mrs. Santa Claus." She 
 clasped his arm and clung to it as they made their 
 way up the piazza steps. 
 
 " Mother father," she said, " John and I 
 love each other. He has asked me to be his wife."
 
 THE QUARRY 273 
 
 " I knew it," said the mother quietly. 
 
 There was no further fighting with conscience 
 now and no room for heed of the to-morrow. 
 However loudly the voice of duty might ring he 
 could not answer it. 
 
 " May I have her for better or for worse? " he 
 asked the parents. 
 
 Mr. Bryan's face had paled. " Molly must talk 
 with her mother," he said. -" Will you join me 
 in the library after you have been to your room, 
 Nelson?"
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 THE wind puffed down the great chimney 
 and filled Mr. Bryan's library with the 
 fragrance of burning oak and pine. The 
 logs crackled above their deepening ashen bed. 
 The night had come and the well-shelved room 
 was snug with the glow from the hearth. 
 
 " Nelson," began Mr. Bryan, leaning forward 
 in his arm-chair, " you are asking us for the best 
 we have ' our only daughter. Are you worthy? " 
 
 " I have tried to be." 
 
 " You must know that you have been the sub- 
 ject of gossip because you have lived as a hermit." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And you have admitted that there is some- 
 thing in your own life which you do not feel that 
 I, Molly's father, should share." 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 "Have you anything to hide from me now?" 
 
 The eyes of the younger man stared into the 
 fire. The dancing flames cast grotesque shadows
 
 THE QUARRY 275 
 
 on his bearded face. His fingers tightened for a 
 moment on the arms of his chair. If he were 
 to lie, the time had come for its utterance, but 
 there was no lie within the man. 
 
 " I cannot give you my confidence," he replied. 
 " I cannot, now." 
 
 " Nelson, my measure of a man is by his in- 
 tegrity and his intelligence," Mr. Bryan urged. 
 " You have brains and industry. Whether you 
 were a foundling at birth or a child of the streets 
 in the North will not weigh heavily in my de- 
 cision." His voice was kindly and assuring. 
 
 " My boy," he said, " you must open your heart 
 to me. I cannot let my daughter undertake to 
 share your life with her eyes blindfolded." 
 
 " I cannot tell you now, Mr. Bryan," Nelson 
 repeated. 
 
 " Then there is only one other course for you if 
 you refuse to trust me," Mr. Bryan said. 
 
 "And that is?" 
 
 " Tell her. Tell her everything. She is of the 
 stamp of her dear mother. She is a young woman 
 but a brave and serious one. She would counte- 
 nance nothing that would bring a touch of dis- 
 honor to her or to her parents."
 
 276 THE QUARRY 
 
 " Tell her? " gasped Nelson. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Molly entered the library, coming from her 
 mother, radiant with smiles. She paused as she 
 saw the pallor of her lover's face and the serious 
 look upon her father's. 
 
 " What is the matter? " she demanded. 
 
 Mr. Bryan rose from his chair. 
 
 " I shall leave you together for awhile," he 
 said, as he left the room. 
 
 "John!" 
 
 With his name on her lips she went to him, and 
 he took her in his arms and kissed her. 
 
 " Let us go outside, on the piazza," he said. 
 " I feel as though I should choke in here. There 
 is something I must tell you." 
 
 She turned from him and flung wide a deep 
 window. The night scowled at them as they 
 left the warm and lighted room for the rain and the 
 dark. 
 
 " I have something to tell you," he repeated. 
 
 '* That you love me? " she asked. 
 
 " Love you? " he repeated. " My heart is torn 
 with love for you." 
 
 " Nothing else matters."
 
 THE QUARRY 277 
 
 She crept to his side and clasped his hands in 
 hers. 
 
 " Your father wants to know who I am," he 
 told her. 
 
 " I know who you are. You are John Nelson, 
 my lover." 
 
 " He wants to know whence I came." 
 
 " From heaven to me," she answered, with 
 a little laugh of content as she kissed him. 
 
 " From prison," he said. 
 
 "Prison?" 
 
 Her laugh vied with the tinkle of the rain in a 
 fountain near the piazza. 
 
 " Why, of course you have been in prison," she 
 said to him. " You have locked yourself in a 
 cell in a mountain house away from me, your sweet- 
 heart who loved you all the year." 
 
 " But you must be serious," he bade her. 
 " You know that I came here as a common work- 
 man. I am an escaped convict. I was sent to 
 prison in the North for life. I was convicted 
 of " 
 
 " I know what you were convicted of," she 
 whispered, smothering his lips with her own. 
 " You were convicted of being too kind and too
 
 278 THE QUARRY 
 
 good to your fellow man. Christ was so con- 
 victed." 
 
 The words fell solemnly from her lips, and they 
 startled Nelson. 
 
 " I was convicted of murder," he said, " of 
 murder in the second degree. I was innocent. 
 I was sentenced, an innocent man, to life in prison. 
 My name is James Montgomery and the police 
 seek me." 
 
 She fell back from him for a moment, the 
 shadows enshrouding her. But she did not leave 
 him for long. Her arms were again about his 
 neck and her lips turned to his. 
 
 " I knew that you had been hurt by some one or 
 something," she whispered, pressing her cheek 
 against his. " You do not need to tell me of your 
 innocence. I shall share your sorrows and your 
 joys until death do us part." 
 
 " I have no moral right to marry you," he said. 
 
 " But you shall take me for your wife," she 
 cried. " I shall live in the mountains with you and 
 never leave your side and, if they come for you, 
 they shall never take you as long as I have a 
 breath of life. They can't have you, my sweet- 
 heart. You are mine until death."
 
 She fell back from him for a moment, the shadows 
 
 enshrouding her. Page 278.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 THE eyes of Mike Kearney's mother were 
 becoming very dim with age. She no 
 longer leaned from the window to catch 
 a glimpse of her homecoming boy at mealtime. 
 From the third floor of the little old house in 
 Oliver Street the people on the sidewalks were 
 blurred, and she could barely distinguish men from 
 women. 
 
 Her old " Key of Heaven " was now replaced 
 by a volume of prayer in much heavier type and 
 she wore glasses during her almost constant de- 
 votions. 
 
 As the detective captain in charge of the Homi- 
 cide Bureau at headquarters, Kearney found even 
 less time to turn his thoughts away from the busi- 
 ness of man hunting. A new generation of crim- 
 inals had sprung up, a generation to be gathered 
 in, introduced to the third degree, " mugged and 
 measured " and catalogued. 
 
 He had developed some excellent sleuths and
 
 280 THE QUARRY 
 
 was beginning to feel pleasure in watching them 
 advance under his guidance and training. He 
 had gained the title of " New York's Best Plain- 
 clothes Man " and Inspector Ranscombe had 
 never ceased to sing his praises to the Com- 
 missioner. 
 
 Kearney's only recreation was still his home, 
 and the sound of his mother's voice, with its 
 pleasing bit of brogue, was his only music. But 
 as the burden of her years became heavier, the 
 strength of her mind was sapped slowly, gradually. 
 She would forget things that had happened only 
 an hour before and remember things vividly and 
 suddenly that had happened years and years 
 past. One of the police surgeons had advised 
 Kearney to replace her beer with an occasional 
 drink of something stronger, so that rheumatism 
 and gouty tendencies might not be added to the 
 afflictions of her fast approaching decrepitude. 
 
 When Mrs. Kearney was served with her 
 evening sip of whiskey and water by her son, her 
 tongue would begin to wag. She would wander 
 from subject to subject in seemingly interminable 
 monologues. Her old cronies tried in vain to 
 stop the flow of her garrulity, so that their own
 
 THE QUARRY 281 
 
 tongues might wag, but they had to give it up and 
 so they called less frequently. 
 
 But Mike, the apple of her eye, to whom she 
 was all the world, never ceased to pretend to be 
 interested, as he sat with her in the sunny window 
 of her spotless kitchen. 
 
 " Now I remember very well," she droned, with 
 quavering voice one evening, without specific 
 reference to any one in particular. " I remember 
 very well that she was quite a fine lady; wasn't 
 she, Mike?" 
 
 " She was that, mother," replied the son, 
 dragging at his pipe. " She was a grand lady." 
 
 " No; not at all grand," she protested, " for 
 she wasn't of the r'yalty kind. She was quiet and 
 nice and dressed so simple." 
 
 She paused and picked up his beer bottle. 
 
 "Is it empty, Mike?" she asked. "I can't 
 see as well as I used to see, lad. Shall I get you a 
 nice, fresh, cold bottle? " 
 
 " Thank you, mother." 
 
 She groped to the window and raised it, taking 
 a bottle from the fire escape. 
 
 The springtime had come again and a gentle, 
 warm breeze entered the room.
 
 282 THE QUARRY 
 
 "My!" she exclaimed, "the winter has gone 
 at last." 
 
 She fumbled about for the beer opener. He 
 found it and gave it to her. She loved to do things 
 for him as in the old days and he humored her. 
 
 " It was just after I was gettin' your supper, 
 lad," she went on. " Oh, it must be nearly eleven 
 years now. She came in the dure and stood right 
 there so solemn and sweet like, with her little 
 bonnet with the beads. I can see them dancin' 
 in the gaslight now. You could tell in a minute 
 she didn't belong in the nayborhood. Yes, blood 
 tells. She must have had it in her. The Mont- 
 gomerys are the best of Irish, as ye know or ought 
 to know." 
 
 "The Montgomerys ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yis; the old lady whose son was sint up." 
 
 The subject of her wandering gossip and rem- 
 iniscence changed and she babbled on. Kearney 
 settled down to read his afternoon paper as she 
 talked. 
 
 Her voice and her constant loving kindnesses 
 were all that he had in life, besides his job. As 
 he noticed that her mind was wandering to an. 
 unusual degree, a touch of fear crept into his
 
 THE QUARRY 283 
 
 heart. He asked himself what would he do when 
 she was gone. She always kissed him when he 
 left or entered the flat, and she was always busy 
 with his undergarments, his collars, his bed linen, 
 his meals, his beer. 
 
 Could any other woman take her place? He 
 hunched himself in his chair, a sign of his uneasi- 
 ness. 
 
 Kearney had decided on spring for his vacation 
 time. During pleasant weather, murder, like 
 hydrophobia, is rare. He could best afford to 
 leave the job then. Summer, with its maddening 
 days for those packed like cattle in the tenements, 
 would be his busiest season. 
 
 He told himself that after this vacation he would 
 never leave his mother again. He had arranged 
 for one of her cronies to care for her until his 
 return. 
 
 Kearney had made up his mind to take a trip 
 south. He had a clue, after ten years of patient 
 waiting, that was worth looking up. The change 
 might do him good and at the same time he would 
 have something to occupy his mind. 
 
 Some one had placed a headstone on the grave 
 of the mother of James Montgomery. Some one
 
 284 THE QUARRY 
 
 was paying the keeper of the cemetery near Nyack 
 to weed the little plot and keep it bright with, 
 flowers. 
 
 Careful inquiry had shown him that, save for 
 her convict son, Mrs. Montgomery had left no 
 relatives. The cemetery keeper had been cau- 
 tiously questioned. He said that through the mails 
 had come first one hundred dollars in cash with a 
 typewritten note to the effect that a friend of the 
 Montgomery family desired the grave marked. 
 Afterward came other sums to pay for keeping up 
 the plot. 
 
 The postmark on these anonymous communica- 
 tions was " Greenville, S. C." 
 
 Kearney desired to go to Greenville and get 
 in touch with the postal authorities there. 
 
 Another letter would be mailed from that town 
 to Nyack. He would take a glimpse of the man 
 who mailed it. 
 
 He had the typewritten notes. If he failed to 
 find his man through the post-office, he could trace 
 him by means of the typing. Every typewriting 
 machine has its individuality, just as has every 
 human being. The type of no two machines 
 strikes exactly alike. He would find the machine
 
 THE QUARRY 285 
 
 and then find the man, if it became necessary 
 to go about it in that way. He would clear up the 
 Montgomery case and he would hold the record 
 of never having been beaten out by a criminal.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 MICHAEL KEARNEY registered at the 
 Mansion House, Greenville's best hotel, 
 as James Flynn. 
 
 In his room he unpacked his grip. Among other 
 things he removed was a long and wide envelope. 
 It contained a letter from his inspector authorizing 
 him. to request any aid he might need in the name 
 of the police of the City of New York. 
 
 The big envelope also contained a certified 
 copy of the police records of James Montgomery, 
 convicted of the murder of Walter Trueblood, 
 night watchman of the West End National Bank. 
 These records included photographs in full face 
 and profile and the Bertillon measurements and 
 finger prints. There was also a warrant drawn 
 by a New York magistrate, charging James Mont- 
 gomery with being a fugitive from justice and an 
 escaped convict. 
 
 Kearney did not trust these important docu-
 
 THE QUARRY 287 
 
 ments to the care of the hotel servants. As soon 
 as he had washed his face and combed his, shock 
 of hair, he went to the office of the hotel man- 
 ager and had them deposited in his safe. 
 
 The man hunter knew from the soft sound of 
 the voices he heard about him that his own voice 
 would be in striking contrast. It would be futile 
 for him to try the pose of a Southerner. So he let 
 it be known that he was a New Yorker who wanted 
 to live in the South and invest a limited amount 
 of capital. He told the hotel clerk that he was 
 looking for a business opening. His stolid counte- 
 nance gave no hint of his calling. His general 
 appearance was bourgeoise. He could have hung 
 about a bank door or a saloon entrance for 
 hours without causing suspicion or creating curi- 
 osity. 
 
 Kearney left the hotel to look over the city. 
 He coursed its two or three business streets much 
 as a hunting dog would range, in its preliminary 
 run over a field. 
 
 He got the points of the compass set in his 
 mind, the general location of buildings and the 
 industrial, business and residential sections. He 
 studied the general scheme of the trolley system
 
 288 THE QUARRY 
 
 and took rides to the end of each branch, in- 
 quiring about cotton mills and other plants with 
 the casual questions of a sightseer. 
 
 He had not forgotten the testimony of Mont- 
 gomery that he was an apprentice machinist and 
 he remembered the story of the boy's anxiety for 
 his kit of tools. He drifted among the men who 
 handled the machinery of the mills with a story 
 that he wanted to start up a small foundry with 
 a partner who was an expert. All the while his 
 keen little eyes studied closely the face of every 
 man he met. 
 
 After several days of preliminary scouting, he 
 visited the office of the United States District 
 Attorney for the Greenville district. He explained 
 his mission and showed his credentials. He asked 
 the District Attorney to extend to the police of 
 New York his aid in intercepting a letter that 
 would be mailed in Greenville to a certain address 
 in Nyack, N. Y. 
 
 Letters from one man had been mailed quarterly 
 to Nyack from the mountain city. One should be 
 mailed during the first days of June. If possible, 
 he desired to see the man who mailed it. If he 
 could find nothing more than the point at which
 
 THE QUARRY 289 
 
 the letter was mailed, that would help, for it. 
 would narrow his field of inquiry. 
 
 The United States District Attorney knew only 
 that a search was being made for an escaped con- 
 vict. The police of the great cities and the United 
 States Secret Service generally work in harmony, 
 so the District Attorney turned over the detective 
 to a postal inspector. 
 
 With the inspector, Kearney studied the work- 
 ing of the Greenville post-office. He learned that 
 the big mills sent their mail in their own bags by 
 messengers who received the incoming mail and 
 took it away. Certain clerks handled this business 
 entirely. Every mail-bag from a mill would be 
 watched carefully and if a letter addressed to 
 Nyack was found in one of them, Kearney would 
 be given it and he would know that in that partic- 
 ular mill was the man he wanted. The rest would 
 be only a matter of patience and Kearney had 
 plenty of patience. It was his long suit. 
 
 There were not more than fifty mail-boxes in 
 the city. The letters dropped in each of these 
 would be watched. The average man would have 
 said that Kearney was looking for a needle in 
 a haystack. If he was, he was going about it
 
 290 THE QUARRY 
 
 systematically. He was separating the stack into 
 easily handled sheaves and having a man go 
 through each. 
 
 The New York sleuth observed that the letter- 
 boxes in the post-office building were heavily 
 patronized. Country folk bought their stamps 
 one at a time and liked to wait for the distribution 
 of the mails. This gave them a chance to ex- 
 change gossip, talk business and indulge in polit- 
 ical arguments. Then, too, there were several 
 hundred private letter-boxes, bringing to the 
 building as many people of the well-to-do class. 
 
 Kearney determined to give his personal at- 
 tention to the people who came and went from 
 the building. He was back on the trail after 
 eleven years. Indeed, eleven years were as eleven 
 days to him. If his natural span of life had been 
 seventy decades instead of seven, he would have 
 been patient through the whole seven hundred 
 years. 
 
 He had not been able to pick up the lost tracks 
 of Hawkins but Hawkins was skilled in the tricks 
 of the underworld. The real man he was after 
 had been but a country boy when he was sent up 
 for life. In dodging the law he had big chances
 
 THE QUARRY 291 
 
 against him because of his inexperience. He 
 would make many mistakes. He had made one 
 sending money to Nyack. 
 
 It is a police axiom that even the most careful 
 of criminals sometimes overlooks an important 
 detail in covering himself. The bank teller who 
 steals from the cashier, the cashier who steals 
 from the president and the president who steals 
 from the stockholders are all fallible. 
 
 Kearney watched and waited, keeping his ears 
 open all the time to catch the gossip of a smftrll city. 
 He took it all in and sifted it. , In his eyes was the 
 dull stare of a totally uninterested man. His 
 clean-shaven face, with its half-coarse features, 
 wore a blank expression. He was adept in de- 
 ception, which is a quality to be considered in the 
 art of detection. 
 
 There was one big topic that seemed to hold the 
 attention of the people who flocked to the post- 
 office at intervals during the day. It was the 
 marriage of John Nelson to Molly Bryan, the 
 daughter of the president of the Reedy River 
 Cotton Mill Company. 
 
 From fragments of conversation, Kearney 
 learned that these two people were much beloved,
 
 292 THE QUARRY 
 
 the girl because of her beauty and her earnest 
 work among the poor of the mill settlements, and 
 the man because of a saintly life. 
 
 Through the buzz and hum of the gossips, 
 the virtues of this extraordinary man, who lived 
 far back in the mountains and was rich and kind 
 at the same time, were dinned into the head of the 
 man in ambush. 
 
 At sunset, on the evening of the third day of 
 June, just as the post-office was about to close 
 and as the last of the idlers began to depart, a 
 man of serious mien, wearing a beard touched with 
 gray, stepped from an automobile in front of the 
 building. He entered and went to one of the mail 
 slots, dropping a letter therein. 
 
 It had hardly touched the bottom of the little 
 chute when three distinct knocks sounded on the 
 glass window-pane behind the detective. It was 
 the signal agreed upon between the clerk within 
 and the man on watch outside. 
 
 A thrill of exultation that was worth waiting 
 eleven years to experience shot through Kearney. 
 His hands itched to close on the arm of this person. 
 The mastering of this one emotion of which his 
 nature was capable left him astonished, for he had
 
 THE QUARRY 293 
 
 not expected to come upon a man of the type before 
 him. There was something so grave in the eyes of 
 his quarry and in the cast of his countenance that 
 one could easily have mistaken him for a preacher 
 of the Word of God. His carriage was dignified and 
 he was dressed soberly and without ornament. 
 
 The people on the steps of the post-office had 
 drawn back respectfully before him, touching 
 their hats. It was evident that he was widely 
 known and that he was revered. 
 
 Kearney had not determined what step to 
 take next when the man whose shadow he was to 
 become was stopped by another. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Nelson," cried the citizen accosting 
 him, " I would like to wish you all the happiness 
 in the world the day before your marriage." 
 
 Nelson's face broke into a smile of pleasure. 
 
 " Thank you, sir," he replied. " I could never 
 hope to deserve all the good wishes that have been 
 offered me." 
 
 " Deserve them! " his well-wisher exclaimed. 
 " Why, the country people from up your way are 
 already flocking to town in their wagons to crowd 
 about the church during the ceremony and to sing 
 your praises. They seem to feel that they can
 
 294 THE QUARRY 
 
 never do enough to show how much they love 
 you." 
 
 Nelson looked embarrassed and returned to his 
 machine outside. 
 
 Kearney had studied him from the crown of his 
 head to the heels. If that man was Jim Mont- 
 gomery, the change was remarkable. He made 
 no attempt to follow him. He felt sure that Nel- 
 son had not seen him. A man as prominent in 
 the community as Nelson was could be easily 
 found at any hour of the day or night and then, 
 too, the morrow was his wedding day! 
 
 Kearney took the letter from the postal employee 
 inside and went to his hotel room. 
 
 He asked the clerk for his large envelope from 
 the safe, and when his door was closed behind him, 
 he drew forth the pictures from the Gallery of 
 Rogues. He studied them carefully. The man 
 hunter felt that there was some faint, intangible 
 hint about the eyes in the photographs which 
 connected them with the man who had mailed the 
 letter to Nyack.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 TWO weeks of seclusion in their mountain 
 home, two weeks with every hour of day 
 and night filled with golden romance, and 
 John Nelson and his bride brought an end to 
 their honeymoon. 
 
 The castle of the one-time hermit contained his 
 workshop. From it had gone his latest invention. 
 His improved knitting machines were already 
 installed in a plant built for them. His company 
 had been capitalized and set in motion. He was 
 its president and chief stockholder. 
 
 Scores of women and girls from the mill country 
 around and even from the backwoods were waiting 
 for employment. 
 
 Although his knitting mills could produce the 
 same amount of finished product at half the oper- 
 ating expenses of any other mill, Nelson did not 
 look forward to the accumulation of large profits. 
 He and Molly decided that they would make the 
 plant a model one, a place where labor would be
 
 296 THE QUARRY 
 
 paid its highest figure. It would be an industry 
 in which the profits would find a way to the work- 
 ers as much as to the directors. 
 
 Molly, radiantly happy in the possession of the 
 man she loved and revered for his goodness, was 
 delighted with the future before them. She had 
 always shed benison about her, had always been 
 helpful to others and had with good deeds sweet- 
 ened her own life as well as the lives of those about 
 her. 
 
 The day was at hand for the opening of the new 
 plant and the two motored to Greenville to select 
 their workers, instruct them in their tasks and 
 start the machinery of a new industry. 
 
 Mr. Bryan, his wife and his son were at the mill 
 to witness the start of the new venture which 
 promised so highly. June roses and nasturtiums 
 were piled in a great bank on Nelson's desk. Mr. 
 Bryan had arranged another desk opposite for 
 Molly, knowing her interest in the mill people 
 who would be chosen as operatives. There were 
 many little gifts of gold and silver office utensils 
 hidden under flowers for the bride and bride- 
 groom. 
 
 Nelson had already instructed Molly in the
 
 THE QUARRY 297 
 
 handling of the machines he had built, and the 
 two worked with the girls patiently and taught 
 them their simple duties. 
 
 The first pay-rolls were drawn; the first day's 
 work was under way. Through the wide, open 
 windows of the building came the heavy fragrance 
 of early summer in the country. The grounds 
 about the plant were bright with geraniums and 
 beds of pansies, nasturtiums and peonies. 
 
 In the distant woodlands there was the flash of 
 honeysuckle and jasmine. Sunshine flooded the 
 whole building. John Nelson pressed an electric 
 button on his desk, his wife's hand resting on his. 
 There was the low hum of machinery starting. 
 It settled into a purring, rhythmic beat. 
 
 The pretty mountain girls, all in their freshest 
 ginghams and muslins, a'll happy in the possession 
 of well-paid tasks, stood by the knitting machines 
 watching the flashing needles and the steady flow 
 of the raw material that fed them. Molly Nelson 
 paced the aisles, glad in her task as forewoman 
 for a day. 
 
 Nelson's secretary brought him his first batch 
 of mail in his new business. He trimmed the 
 edges of the envelopes as he mused over his happi-
 
 298 THE QUARRY 
 
 ness and the rosiness of the future. He had nothing 
 to fear. Molly knew his secret, and there was no 
 skeleton in their closet. 
 
 Nothing could cheat them of the taste of heaven 
 that they had had. Whatever disaster 
 
 A shadow fell athwart the room. A stranger was 
 on the threshold. 
 
 Nelson's secretary went to the visitor and in- 
 quired his business. He said that he would like 
 to talk to Mr. Nelson, and was offered a seat. 
 
 Nelson glanced at the man and opened a let- 
 ter. 
 
 Fate was not playing any petty game with 
 him. At the moment that the man hunter seated 
 himself in his presence, he received word from his 
 old probationer friend. 
 
 The letter, miserably scrawled and blotted, 
 read : 
 
 " DEAR KID: I ain't lofing that's why you 
 didn't here from me. I got a chance to do things. 
 Dont count on it to much but if the guy is living 
 I'm going to take him to the D. A. office or die 
 trying. 
 
 " BILL."
 
 THE QUARRY 299 
 
 The " D. A." office meant the office of the dis- 
 trict attorney of the county and State of New 
 York. 
 
 Nelson did not know the face of the man who 
 sat waiting to address him. His visitor had re- 
 sorted to the old trick of sitting with his back to the 
 light. 
 
 "Well, sir?" asked Nelson. 
 
 The visitor half rose in his chair. 
 
 " I'd like to talk with you in private," he said. 
 
 " There is nothing that my secretary should 
 not hear," Nelson informed him, surprised. 
 
 " Mebbe there is, Mr. Nelson," the visitor said, 
 with a suggestion of warning in his voice. 
 
 " What is your business, please? " 
 
 The visitor approached the desk and moved 
 the right lapel of his coat as he did so. 
 
 Nelson saw on the man's breast a gold badge. 
 After the first curious glance he studied it, and 
 from the inscription in blue enamel learned that 
 his caller was a captain of detectives of New York 
 City. 
 
 For the fraction of a second Nelson felt as 
 though his blood had turned to ice-water. 
 
 Molly entered the office and her bright face
 
 300 THE QUARRY 
 
 brought him in fuller realization of the tragedy 
 that was at hand. But his years of self denial, 
 his whole life of splendid control of himself were 
 to stand him in good stead. 
 
 " What is it now, dear? " he asked calmly, 
 smiling as she came to him. 
 
 " I just came in to tell you that the girls are 
 doing splendidly," she said, sitting on the edge 
 of his desk. 
 
 He forced a laugh to his lips. 
 
 " I am busy, Molly," he said in feigned reproof. 
 '' There is a gentleman here who desires to see me 
 on some business." She turned and gave a glance 
 to the detective. 
 
 " Well," she said, with a sigh, " I shall be back 
 in twenty minutes." 
 
 She left the room, waving a kiss to her hus- 
 band. 
 
 " Mr. Adams," he said to his secretary, " you 
 are excused for half an hour. This gentleman de- 
 sires to see me alone." 
 
 Adams put aside the correspondence he had 
 started to go through and left the room. 
 
 " Now, sir," said Nelson to his visitor. 
 
 Kearney's keen little eyes were studying every
 
 THE QUARRY 301 
 
 line in the countenance of the man before him. 
 Suddenly he stared Nelson full in the face, with 
 that trick of the detective which aims to discon- 
 cert the man under suspicion. 
 
 Nelson's eyes met his squarely. His heart was 
 beating like a trip-hammer but his face was a 
 mask. 
 
 " What can I do for you? " he asked. 
 
 " Mr. Montgomery," began Kearney. 
 
 " I am Mr. Nelson." 
 
 Cautiously, Kearney abandoned this line of 
 attack. 
 
 " Beg your pardon, Mr. Nelson," he said, "but I 
 am looking for James Montgomery, who came here 
 about six years ago, got a job in one of the mills 
 as a mechanic and rapidly made a name and for- 
 tune for himself." 
 
 " I never heard of him," replied Nelson, real- 
 izing that the change he had made in his appear- 
 ance had produced uncertainty in the mind of his 
 questioner. " May I ask your name and busi- 
 ness ? " 
 
 " I'm Mike Kearney of the New York detective 
 bureau," the sleuth told him. 
 
 " You wish to arrest this man Montgomery? "
 
 302 THE QUARRY 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What has he done?" 
 
 " Murder. He is an escaped convict." 
 
 " In such a quiet community as this we would 
 soon know of the presence of a man of the criminal 
 type." 
 
 Nelson rose from his chair and walked to the 
 nearest window. 
 
 His powerful motor was near enough to the 
 ledge for him to spring into it and be off in a 
 flash. The thought came to him but he did not 
 act upon it. 
 
 Kearney showed a slight trace of uneasiness. 
 During his stay in Greenville he had heard nothing 
 but praise for the virtues of the man he felt sure 
 was the one he wanted. The poor were especially 
 loud in their acclaim. The workers delighted in 
 telling how fair he was in his dealings with them 
 and how they benefited as much from his inven- 
 tions as did the mill owners. 
 
 He had heard in a vague way of philanthropists 
 among the rich, people who gave books or money 
 to colleges or who kept up the settlements in the 
 poor sections of New York. But he had not heard 
 of any one man who gave all his life, the product
 
 THE QUARRY 303 
 
 of his brains and the wealth that came to him so 
 that as many people as possible around him would 
 have happiness. 
 
 " I've got Montgomery's records with me," 
 he said finally. " The Bertillon system makes it 
 impossible for an officer of the law to make a 
 mistake in identification. I got his pictures." 
 
 He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled 
 out the two Rogues' Gallery photographs of 
 James Montgomery, handing them to the man 
 standing at the window. 
 
 Nelson pretended to glance idly at the pictures. 
 He beheld his own countenance as a boy when he 
 was fresh from the country. He saw the strained 
 look in the eyes and the heavy lines in the face, 
 the misery and despair that were his that day 
 eleven years before when he was taken by the 
 police. 
 
 His hand trembled ever so slightly as he looked 
 at the photographs. 
 
 " He does not look like a murderer or a crimi- 
 nal," he said, as if speaking to himself. " This 
 looks to be the face of some poor boy, some country 
 youth who might have made one mistake in life 
 or who might have been unjustly accused. If
 
 304 THE QUARRY 
 
 he committed any crime there must have been 
 some reason other than sheer criminal instinct. 
 I could hardly believe this boy a murderer." 
 
 He handed back the pictures to the detective. 
 
 " I have his finger-prints," said Kearney. He 
 drew the Bertillon record from his pocket. His 
 uneasiness increased. He mopped his brow and 
 felt as if some strange, insidious influence was .at 
 work within him to sidetrack him from the path 
 of duty. 
 
 " Now, if a man was suspected wrongly of being 
 Montgomery," he suggested, " that man would 
 only have to give his finger-prints and his true 
 identity would be shown." 
 
 " I know nothing of such matters," replied 
 Nelson. 
 
 He was prepared to meet any demand of the 
 law save that of showing the little whorls, circles, 
 islands and parabolae in the cuticle of his fingers. 
 
 Kearney had taken a little box filled with char- 
 coal dust from his waistcoat pocket and was 
 spreading some of it on a sheet of white paper. 
 
 He was ready to make the demand for proof from 
 John Nelson that he was not James Montgomery.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 JOHN NELSON stood watching the sleuth as 
 he made ready for this single simple but 
 awful test. 
 
 He determined to play for time. Why, he 
 did not know, for a few seconds, minutes or even 
 days would mean little to him now. 
 
 " If there is anything further you wish to say," 
 he told Kearney, " I must ask you to excuse me. 
 This mill has just been opened and I am anxious 
 about the new operatives. I would not have one 
 of my girls hurt for all the money that might be 
 made with machinery." 
 
 He went to a wide door which opened directly 
 into the operating room. Kearney heard the 
 purring of the machinery increase in volume as 
 Nelson passed through the open door. 
 
 He now felt sure that Nelson was James Mont- 
 gomery and that the finger-print test would prove 
 it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But he did not 
 bay his delight as would the real hound when his
 
 306 THE QUARRY 
 
 quarry was run down. He realized that the 
 task before him was going to smack of danger. 
 Nelson was fairly idolized by the people among 
 whom he had found refuge from the law. These 
 people were more or less primitive and had a sense 
 of justice not built upon statutes reeled off yearly 
 by Tammany legislators. If the news spread that 
 Nelson had been made a prisoner and was to be 
 taken from the community he had made better 
 and happier for his existence there, at least the 
 rough country people would protest. These 
 people he had fed when hungry, had succored 
 from distress and had sheltered when shelterless. 
 
 But he was still the implacable law officer, 
 the machinelike product of machine government, 
 and he would run no chance of his man slipping 
 from him after all these years. He followed Nelson 
 into the operating room and saw him greet his 
 wife. 
 
 Upper and nether files of bright, new needles 
 gnashed away steadily at their work, as the girls 
 fed them with material and the finished product 
 flowed into large wicker baskets. 
 
 A number of the young women, interested as 
 young women are in a bride and groom, turned
 
 THE QUARRY 307 
 
 at their work to watch, with many smiles and 
 nods, the greeting between Nelson and Molly. 
 One of the girls, with a heavy mass of black hair, 
 had dropped her tresses because of the heat of 
 the day. Nelson saw her turn with a smile to 
 speak to another operative several feet away. In 
 a second he realized her danger. A strand of her 
 hair in one of the cogs of his machinery and she 
 would meet a frightful death. 
 
 He forgot his own terrible predicament, al- 
 though his own fate trembling in the balance, 
 was even worse than death. 
 
 A braid of the girl's hair swept into the steel 
 cogs of the machine she had been operating. At 
 the pull on her scalp she uttered a shriek that rang 
 through the building. The tireless double row 
 of needles worked away within a few inches of 
 the head of the unfortunate girl. 
 
 Her cry was echoed by a roar from Nelson to 
 the man in charge of the switch controlling the 
 current. 
 
 In two bounds he reached the girl and caught 
 the fastened braid of hair with both hands. Her 
 head fell under his right arm. He gave a mighty, 
 twisting pull as the current was cut off and the
 
 308 THE QUARRY 
 
 machine began to slow down. The hair was torn 
 free of the cogs and the girl dropped in a dead faint 
 to the floor. The needles still flashed, but slowly. 
 
 Kearney had run toward Nelson to help in 
 the rescue of the girl if he could. He saw the 
 mill president stagger, as if faint. His face was 
 whiter than the sheet of paper he had used to hold 
 his charcoal dust. 
 
 The detective saw Nelson's lips come together 
 in a firm, blue line. The blood had left them. He 
 spread forth his hands and in one terrible, ghastly 
 moment made his sacrifice. 
 
 The two hands fell between the bright needles 
 and the upper and nether files sunk into them, 
 tearing through every finger, destroying completely 
 the one strange stamp of absolute human indi- 
 viduality that Nature has provided the record 
 of the flesh itself. 
 
 No cry escaped Nelson's lips. The agony was 
 keen, but what was such agony compared to that 
 which would be his if the man from New York 
 Police Headquarters slipped handcuffs upon him 
 and took him from his wife, from the people he had 
 worked with and for, to be taken away and be 
 buried alive?
 
 THE QUARRY 309 
 
 Molly had started toward her husband but her 
 woman's nature was not equal to the horror of 
 the moment. She fell face downward to the 
 floor. 
 
 The machinery came to a full stop but the steel 
 jaws had closed over Nelson's hands. 
 
 Kearney was the nearest man to him. 
 
 " Just move that iron rod to the right there," 
 he heard Nelson say. " Move it slowly, just an 
 inch backward." 
 
 Kearney obeyed and the jaws released their 
 hold. 
 
 " There is a physician in the Reedy Mills," 
 called Nelson, to one of the white-faced girls. 
 " Telephone him quickly." 
 
 He turned to another girl, ignoring Kearney. 
 
 " Quick," he instructed her. " Tie some of this 
 material tightly about my wrists." 
 
 He held forth his dripping hands. 
 
 The sleuth, his mind for a moment blank with 
 horror at this deliberate sacrifice, grabbed up a 
 piece of knitted material and made a tourniquet, 
 first for one wrist and then for the other. 
 
 The mill physician arrived as this first aid 
 work was accomplished. He quickly cleaned and
 
 310 THE QUARRY 
 
 made aseptic the myriad little wounds in the 
 hands of Nelson. 
 
 " The bones of four fingers in the right hand 
 and of three in the left seem to be broken," he 
 said, as he began bandaging. " They will mend 
 easily. In a month, only the scars will be left." 
 
 Molly had come from her swoon and was holding 
 her husband's bandaged hands lightly in her own, 
 her tears wetting them. She was fully cognizant 
 of all that had happened. She knew who the 
 stranger was standing stupidly but with an ashen 
 face near her. 
 
 Kearney slipped back to the office, picked up 
 the photographs from Nelson's desk, put on his 
 hat and made his way furtively from the building.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 INSPECTOR RANSCOMBE was cleaning 
 out his desk. 
 
 The end of his police career had come. He 
 had been placed on the retired list and an order 
 from a new commissioner that morning had broken 
 the news to him suddenly, viciously, that he was 
 no longer wanted. 
 
 Lieutenant Jimmy Dunn, in the big room out- 
 side, had heard the " Old Man " roar. Rans- 
 combe wanted to die in harness. He was old but 
 he knew his job and had plenty of virility. 
 
 The new commissioner was entirely a political 
 appointee. The " lid " had been kept on New 
 York a little too long and the gamblers and others 
 who made their fortunes by violating the law had 
 squeezed down on the mayor through Tammany 
 Hall. An election was at hand and the mayor had 
 to obey or retire to private life for the rest of his 
 days. 
 
 The scowl that had frighte-ned many a crooked
 
 312 THE QUARRY 
 
 detective lay heavily on his forehead, and in his 
 eyes, as Ranscombe selected his personal papers 
 from those that were departmental, was a glint 
 of bitter protest. 
 
 There was a tap at the door. 
 
 " Who is it? What d'yiih want? " he growled 
 angrily. 
 
 Kearney showed his face in the door, timidly. 
 
 " Come in, Boss? " he asked. 
 
 Ranscombe nodded and returned to his task. 
 
 " I found him, Boss," began Kearney. 
 
 " Found who? " snapped the inspector. " For 
 God's sake get it out of your system and beat 
 it." 
 
 " Jim Montgomery, who escaped from Sing 
 Sing," explained Kearney, twisting a felt hat 
 nervously in his hands. 
 
 The inspector looked up in surprise. 
 
 " Jim Montgomery? " he repeated, as he reached 
 for a telegram on his desk. 
 
 " Yes, sir, but I didn't bring him back with me." 
 
 " Oh, you didn't? That was considerate. I 
 guess you found out that we had the wrong man 
 in stir, eh ? " 
 
 " No, sir. It wasn't that. I found that he was
 
 THE QUARRY 313 
 
 on the level all these years. He was just married 
 and he changed his measurements so that all I 
 could get to prove he was the man was his finger- 
 prints. When I tried to get them from him he 
 stuck his hands in some machinery and " 
 
 "What!" 
 
 The inspector half rose from his chair. His 
 heavy jaws came together with a snap. 
 
 " Yes, sir. He'd made a good name and rather 
 than disgrace it and his wife and the people he 
 lived among " 
 
 " Hell, man, d'yiih mean to say that you let him 
 make that sacrifice? " 
 
 The inspector's face was splotched with the 
 purple of a mighty wrath. 
 
 " I didn't know he was going to do it, Boss," 
 Kearney replied, in a choking voice. " Before 
 God, I'd 'a' thrown down my job before I'd 'a' 
 stood for that." 
 
 Ranscombe brought his right fist down on his 
 desk and shot out his lower jaw as he stared at 
 Kearney. 
 
 " You bloodhound," he half screamed. 
 
 Kearney sat down in a chair beside the desk 
 and half covered his face with his big, red paws.
 
 314 THE QUARRY 
 
 " God, Boss," he groaned. " Montgomery was 
 the kind of a man who would be crucified for 
 those he loved." 
 
 " How did you trail him ? " 
 
 " I went to his home town and found that his 
 mother was dead," explained the man hunter. 
 " I looked up the cemetery and found that the 
 keeper was being paid for caring for the grave. 
 I traced the letters enclosing the money and found 
 that the son." 
 
 "Blessed Virgin!" exclaimed the inspector. 
 " Didn't you have heart enough or brains enough 
 to stop? " 
 
 " When I reached him I wanted to stop. I 
 wanted to stop, Boss. But you trained me never 
 to let up." 
 
 Ranscombe kicked back his chair and paced'the 
 room, holding in his hands the telegram he had 
 taken from his desk. 
 
 He shuddered when he paused before his sleuth 
 whom he had trained so well. 
 
 " Read that," he said, handing him the tele- 
 gram. 
 
 Kearney scratched his head as he read the 
 words of this message:
 
 THE QUARRY . 315 
 
 " TUCSON, ARIZONA. 
 " RANSCOMBE, 
 
 " Chief Detectives, New York: 
 
 " Harry Gutzler, old yegg, dying here of 
 consumption, confesses murder of Trueblood, 
 bank watchman, New York, eleven years ago. 
 Ex-convict named Hawkins found him in bad 
 lands and brought him in. 
 
 " ALSOP, Chief." 
 
 The inspector had gone to a window and was 
 staring out of it abstractedly. 
 
 Kearney read the telegram a second and then 
 a third time. He looked up at the broad back of 
 his chief, placed the telegram on his desk and 
 moved gingerly from the room. He did not lift 
 his eyes or speak a word as he passed Jimmy 
 Dunn, perched, round and cherublike, on a chair 
 at the big desk of the assembly room. His travel- 
 ing bag lay near the brass rail about the desk. He 
 picked it up without stopping and departed from 
 headquarters. 
 
 Kearney took a trolley to Duane Street and 
 transferred to a horse-car to the further East Side. 
 
 The dust and grime of long travel were still on
 
 316 THE QUARRY 
 
 him. In the return from the last lap in the long 
 man hunt that had taken eleven years, he had had 
 too many things to think over to bother about 
 wash basins and combs and brushes. 
 
 On the stoop of the old-fashioned house in 
 Oliver Street he found a group of old Irish women 
 of the neighborhood. He knew their faces and 
 nodded to them. 
 
 They huddled in a tighter knot of worried hu- 
 manity. 
 
 " What's the matter? " he demanded. 
 
 " Ye're none too soon," said one of them. 
 
 The others began to croon softly to themselves. 
 He knew what that meant. 
 
 The grip fell from his hand, but he steadied 
 himself and entered the house, mounting the 
 stairs slowly. He walked into the kitchen of the 
 little flat and found it spotlessly clean. 
 
 An old woman sat in a chair by the window, 
 the beads of a rosary passing through her withered 
 fingers. 
 
 She was not his mother! 
 
 Kearney removed his hat and crossed the 
 threshold of his old mother's bedroom. She lay 
 in bed and at first he thought her asleep.
 
 THE QUARRY 317 
 
 Her hands, like brown wax, were clasped about 
 the last copy of the " Key of Heaven " he had 
 bought for her. 
 
 Beside the head of the bed two holy candles 
 burned on a little table. A priest knelt on the 
 floor, praying for the soul of the departed. 
 
 Kearney fell upon his knees and crossed himself 
 once, twice and a third time. 
 
 A cry of distress came from the bottommost 
 reaches of his heart in a low, pitifully sad whine. 
 
 "Aie! Aie! Aie! " it sounded. 
 
 It was the plaint of an animal with a soul.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 THE last act of Inspector Ranscombe, before 
 turning over his office to his successor, was 
 to send to John Nelson the original police 
 records taken of James Montgomery. He offered 
 his services in any step that he might take to 
 have the courts of New York right the wrong 
 that had been done him. The inspector also 
 wrote confidentially to the governor of the State 
 giving full details of the case. 
 
 Nelson, his hands again healed, and his wife 
 and her family grateful that he had not been 
 permanently crippled, took Mr. Bryan into his 
 confidence and placed the whole matter before 
 him, asking his advice. 
 
 The police of Tucson provided the New York 
 authorities with ample details of the confession 
 of the dying yegg. He was too far gone to send 
 East a prisoner. When Nelson learned of this, 
 he asked that efforts be made to let the man die
 
 THE QUARRY 319 
 
 outside of prison. The yegg's own Maker had 
 taken his case from the hands of the law. 
 
 Mr. Bryan engaged eminent counsel in New 
 York to have the case of James Montgomery 
 formally re-opened by the Appellate Division of 
 the Supreme Court. A reversal of the verdict 
 found by the lower court was entered in the 
 records and " Acquitted " replaced the word 
 " Convicted." 
 
 The name of Nelson had its value in the world, 
 a value made by terrific effort, by kindness, by 
 compassion, by struggle and by intellect. The 
 woman he loved had taken that name. The 
 people among whom he had worked had accepted 
 it as representing all that was fine and high and 
 noble. 
 
 The Supreme Court of South Carolina, in 
 chambers, gave to James Montgomery the right 
 to have legal use of the name of John Nelson. 
 This document from the court was placed in the 
 archives of the State without publicity. 
 
 While the last of these details, clearing away 
 the past and making straight the future for 
 Nelson, were being attended to by lawyers, John 
 Nelson himself, his wife and her parents were
 
 320 THE QUARRY 
 
 walking impatiently up and down the station 
 platform of the Southern Railway in Green- 
 ville. 
 
 Mr. Bryan's finest horses and traps, his negro 
 coachman in the freshest of linen suits and 
 brown straw beavers, were there also. Guests 
 and very important guests, evidently, were 
 expected. 
 
 The crowd that always gathered to greet the 
 express train from the north fidgeted with im- 
 patience. Perhaps a party of famous million- 
 aires or renowned statesmen was coming to 
 Greenville. The Bryan family had never turned 
 out so conspicuously at the station in all its 
 history. 
 
 The faint shriek of the locomotive in the dis- 
 tance brought the idlers nearer the tracks to peer 
 northward and get a glimpse of the oncoming 
 train. 
 
 Molly Nelson clapped her hands with delight. 
 Mr. Bryan's face was wreathed with smiles. 
 The coachmen flicked the ears of their fine 
 teams and started them to capering jauntily and 
 gaily. 
 
 If the President of the United States and his
 
 THE QUARRY 321 
 
 cabinet had been coming to Greenville on that 
 train, no finer welcome could have been given 
 them. 
 
 The train thundered up and white-capped 
 porters jumped from the steps of the coaches. 
 
 Among the passengers were two old people, 
 one a bent, white-haired man with long arms and 
 a face that would have been grotesque in its 
 ugliness but for a smile of patience and gentleness 
 that played about his clean-shaven lips; the 
 other was a slender woman well beyond middle 
 age, dressed in black, with a dolman and hat 
 that had been long years out of fashion. 
 
 To this homely and humble pair the Bryans 
 and the Nelsons rushed with cries of joyful greet- 
 ings. 
 
 The Bryan servants fought to win the honor 
 of carrying their two pieces of luggage. The 
 coachmen made their horses dance afresh. 
 
 The crowd exclaimed in one long drawn " Ah " 
 as the pretty Mrs. Nelson deliberately kissed 
 the bent old visitor and then put her arm about 
 the waist of the woman who had come with 
 him. 
 
 A strange word of greeting for the ears of the
 
 322 THE QUARRY 
 
 rich and the fashionable came from the lips of the 
 old man to John Nelson. 
 
 "Kid!" 
 
 "Bill!" was the reply. 
 
 The stately Mrs. Bryan was making as much of 
 the flustered, little, old woman, whom the crowd 
 heard called by the name of " Jennie " as Mr. 
 Bryan and Mr. Nelson were making of the homely 
 man called " Bill." 
 
 The train pulled out on its way to Atlanta and 
 the party bundled into the fine carriages. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins were taken to their new 
 home their first real home. It might have been 
 called a cottage in the South, but to the woman 
 from Corlear's Hook it was a mansion such as 
 she had never dreamed of entering, even as a 
 servant. 
 
 Fresh and spick and span in new paint, its 
 garden a tangle of glorious blossoms, its piazzas 
 wide and cool and its grounds stretching a good 
 ten acres about it, Bill and his wife thought it 
 the home of the Bryans. 
 
 They entered the house. It was finely but 
 modestly furnished. Silver glistened on the side- 
 board and vases and jars of cut-glass were filled
 
 THE QUARRY 323 
 
 with freshly cut flowers. Everywhere was a touch 
 of femininity and cosiness, showing the hand of 
 Molly Nelson. 
 
 There were comfortable desks and easy chairs, 
 lamps that hung low and spread soft lights for 
 old eyes, and many rugs. There was even a fat, 
 sleepy tabby dozing on a cushion in one of the 
 window seats. 
 
 Molly took Mrs. Hawkins to her bedroom, a 
 front room with a verandah. She threw wide 
 the deep windows and the East Side woman gazed 
 out into the loveliness of the garden. 
 
 " It's grand," she gasped. " Mrs. Nelson, it's 
 grand, ma'am. Central Park never had anything 
 on this." 
 
 Nelson had brought behind them his old friend 
 and helper, the man who was of the type that 
 society had given up as unregenerate. The de- 
 mands of his probation from Sing Sing had all been 
 met. The rest of his life was to be what he would 
 make it for himself. 
 
 Nelson signalled to Molly to come to him. 
 ' We are going to leave you two together for 
 awhile," he said to the old probationer. " This 
 is your home and your wife's home."
 
 324 THE QUARRY 
 
 Bill's shaggy eyebrows were raised in surprise. 
 
 " You mean for a visit? " he asked. 
 
 " I mean forever," replied Nelson. " You will 
 find the deeds in your desk down-stairs." 
 
 Nelson drew Molly from the room. 
 
 As they closed the door they heard Mrs. Haw- 
 kins sobbing. 
 
 FINIS.
 
 By the author of " The Mountain Girl. 1 
 
 JOYFUL HEATHERBY 
 
 By PAYNE ERSKINE 
 Illustrated by M. Leone Bracker. $1.35 net 
 
 This splendid novel is Payne Erskine's masterpiece, a story 
 so full of the struggle and strength and interest of life today 
 that it stirs our emotions deeply while it delights us with its 
 unusual plot and masterly character drawing. 
 
 The scenes are chiefly laid in Boston and in a small New 
 England coast town, the leading characters being an artist and 
 a delightful country girl whose charm and innocence will appeal 
 strongly to every reader who comes to know her. The perfect 
 type of unspoiled American womanhood, Joyful is as charming 
 a heroine as has been portrayed in fiction in many a day. To 
 tell the story of this appealing romance in detail would be to 
 lessen the reader's pleasure in one of the most remarkable novels 
 of recent years; it must suffice to say that "Joyful Heatherby " 
 is a strong and appealing love story, in which people of rare 
 quality are pictured and some of the most vital problems of the 
 day are handled illuminatingly and inspiringly. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
 
 A dramatic story of love and life 
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 
 
 By A. S. M. HUTCHINSON 
 Author of "Once Aboard the Lugger," etc. 
 
 Frontispiece. 12mo. $1.36 net. 
 
 Mr. Hutch in son has in "The Happy Warrior" written a 
 modern romance with literary qualities that invites comparison 
 with the best work of those authors of a generation ago whose 
 names have become household words. 
 
 Lord and Lady Burdon's sudden elevation to the peerage 
 is due to the untimely death in India of the gallant young Lord 
 Burdon, the twelfth baron, while leading a charge in a sharp 
 frontier engagement. But it appears that the dead peer had 
 contracted a secret marriage before he left for India, and Lady 
 Burdon has scarcely established herself in her new surround- 
 ings when Audrey, the widow of the brave young soldier, ap- 
 pears on the scene. Repelled by Lady Burdon, she dies in 
 giving birth to a boy, left in the care of her sister, who is de- 
 termined to secure revenge. 
 
 The growth to manhood and the love affairs of these two 
 children, one the son of the new Lady Burdon, who inherits the 
 title from his father, and the other the real peer in the person 
 of the posthumous son of the late Lord Burdon, provide a 
 theme which only a skilled hand could deal with in a convincing 
 manner. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
 
 By the author of "The Broad Highway" 
 
 THE 
 AMATEUR GENTLEMAN 
 
 By JEFFERY FARNOL 
 Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. 12mo. $1.40 net. 
 
 By the complete and overwhelming success of "The Broad 
 Highway," Jeffery Farnol has permanently fixed his name in 
 the minds of hundreds of thousands of readers throughout the 
 English-speaking world, and the publication of a new novel 
 from his pen is certain to arouse the widest interest. "The 
 Amateur Gentleman," the first story he has written since "The 
 Broad Highway" was published, possesses the same qualities 
 which gave that book its universal appeal the charm of style, 
 the fresh, unusual humor, the vigorous yet whimsical character- 
 izations. The period is the early nineteenth century, the scene 
 England, and you will read of country things and people, of 
 gentlemen of fashion and fine ladies, of romantic adventure, and 
 hand-to-hand encounters and, most of all, of true love the 
 whole making an entrancing story rich in sentiment and over- 
 flowing with ennobling human nature. 
 
 Barnabas Barty, a country-bred youth, son of the retired 
 champion pugilist of England, is left a fortune ; he sets forth 
 for London to "become a gentleman," has many adventures, 
 meets people of widely different types, and falls in love with a 
 fascinating heroine. 
 
 "The Amateur Gentleman" is likely to be the most popu- 
 lar book of the year. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
 
 By the author of " The Wood-carver of 'Lympus.' 
 
 A CRY 
 IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 By MARY K WALLER 
 Frontispiece in color by A. I. Keller. $1.30 net. 
 
 As complete a revelation of a woman's heart and mind as 
 Jane Eyre. Boston Globe. 
 
 A fresh and delightful story, full of living interest and of 
 sentiment New York World. 
 
 A worthy successor to "The Wood-carver of 'Lympus" and 
 "Flamsted Quarries." . . . Absorbing and emotion-stirring. 
 Philadelphia Record. 
 
 Really an uncommonly interesting romance. ... It 
 carries with it a deep human appeal that cannot escape mature 
 readers. Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Miss Waller has written good books before, notably "The 
 Wood-carver of 'Lympus," but her latest may be regarded as 
 her best. St. Louis Post-Despatch. 
 
 Tells with much emotional power, a story with a tangled plot 
 and mystery. Miss Waller writes with distinction, and her work 
 is always characterized by fineness of fibre and nobility of 
 feeling. New York Times. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
 
 3 1158 00721 9750 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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