collapsed by the vast relief which followed upon his vast suspense, he sank down upon the stoop, and the three words of the footman maintained a thrilling iteration in his ears.

The three words were: "Thank you, Miss."

CHAPTER II

A CALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR

The next morning David was awakened by the ringing of a gong. He tumbled out of bed in order to be ready for the march to breakfast at half past six; and he had begun to dress before it dawned upon him that he was a free man, and that the ringing was a prank a four-year habit had played upon him—a prank that, by the way, was to be repeated every morning for many a week to come.

He slipped back into bed, and lay there considering what he should first do. He had to find work quickly, but he felt his four walled years had earned him a holiday—one day in which to re-acquaint himself with freedom. So, after he had eaten, he felt his way down the dark, heavy-aired stairways, stepped through the doorway, and then paused in wonderment.

All was as fresh, as marvellous, as yesterday. The narrow street was a bustle of freedom—pounding carts, school-going boys and girls, playing children, marketing wives—no stripes, no lock-steps, no guards. And the yellow sun! He held his bleached face up to it, as though he would press against its sympathetic warmth; and he sucked deeply of the September air. And the colours!—the reds and whites and browns of the children, the occasional green of a plant on a window sill, the clear blue of the strip of sky at the street's top. He had almost forgotten there were colours other than stripes, the gray of stone walls, the black of steel bars.

And how calmly the streetful of people took these marvels!

At first he expected the people he threaded among to look into his face, see his prison record there, draw away from him, perhaps taunt him with "thief." But no one even noticed him, and gradually this fear began to fade from him. As he was crossing the Bowery, a car clanged at his back. He frantically leaped, with a cry, to the sidewalk, and leaned against a column of the elevated railroad—panting, exhausted, heart pounding. He had not before known how weak, nerveless, prison had made him.

He found, as he continued his way, that the sidewalk undulated like a ship's deck beneath his giddy legs; he found himself afraid of traffic-crowded corners that women 

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