nursing and working in the mission. They had a sort of hospital for broken-down bums, and she was taking care of them old whiskey-soaks. Well, we got stuck, and we didn’t give a cuss for them parole rules, and the mission people, they thought it’d be all right, and we got married———
“A con can’t get married, and a con on parole is a con. Jennings, he came down to the city on his vacation and seen the marriage license in the paper. We’d been married wan day when they pinched me.
“They throwed me back here and put me in the foundry at the emery wheel, and the emery wheel is a-cuttin’ away me lungs. Jennings, he fixes the jobs; he’s a-gettin’ back at me.”
The voice in the darkness above stopped. A long dreary fit of coughing followed. 9009, lying on his back, straining his eyes upward, thought of Nell, and put the thought out of his mind. “What’s become of her,” he asked curiously; “of the girl you got stuck on and married?”
