He had been sent to Dartmoor after spending three months in
Wormwood Scrubbs. Old hands had told him variously that he was
fortunate or unlucky. It was usual to have twelve months at the
Scrubbs before testing the life of a convict establishment. He
believed there was some talk of sending him to Parkhurst, and here
he traced the influence which T. X. would exercise, for Parkhurst
was a prisoner's paradise.

He heard his warder's voice behind him.

"Right turn, 43, quick march."

He walked ahead of the armed guard, through the great and gloomy
gates of the prison, turned sharply to the right, and walked up
the village street toward the moors, beyond the village of
Princetown, and on the Tavistock Road where were two or three
cottages which had been lately taken by the prison staff; and it
was to the decoration of one of these that A. O. 43 had been sent.

The house was as yet without a tenant.

A paper-hanger under the charge of another warder was waiting for
the arrival of the painter. The two warders exchanged greetings,
and the first went off leaving the other in charge of both men.

For an hour they worked in silence under the eyes of the guard.
Presently the warder went outside, and John Lexman had an
opportunity of examining his fellow sufferer.

He was a man of twenty-four or twenty-five, lithe and alert. By