body--and now his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him.
Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely
sullen, impenetrably morose. He tired of Laurence's reading--I think
the boy's free quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body,
the fact that he could run and jump as pleased him, irked and chafed
the man new and unused to his own physical infirmity.

He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the
dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity,
withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant
reproach.

But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and
contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded,
leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when,
concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his
future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall
back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again
could he be what he had been once--"the slickest cracksman in
America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been
exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and
he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most
cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a
light. _He had been Slippy McGee_. Sure of himself, his had been that
curious inverted pride which is the stigmata of the criminal.

More than once I saw him writhe in his chair, tormented, shaken, spent
with futile curses, impotently lamenting his lost kingdom. He still