Gabriel had served his time with consummate skill, courage and intelligence.  Like all wise men, he had recognized force majeure, and had submitted.  He had made practically no infractions of the prison rules, during his whole “bit.”  He had been quiet, obedient and industrious.  His work, in the brush factory, had always been well done; and though he had consistently refused to bear tales, to spy, to inform or be a stool-pigeon—­the quickest means of winning favor in any prison—­yet he had given no opportunity for savagery and violence to be applied to him.  Not even Flint’s eager wish to have his jailers force him into rebellion had succeeded.  Realizing to the full the sort of tactics that would be used to break, and if possible to kill him, Gabriel had met them all with calm self-reliance and with a generalship that showed his brain and nerves were still unshaken.  On their own ground he had met these brutes, and he had beaten them at their own game.

Their attempt to make a “dope” out of him had ignominiously failed.  He had detected the morphine they had cleverly mixed with his water; and, after his drowsiness and weird dreams had convinced him of the plot, had turned the trick on it by secretly emptying this water out and by drinking only while in the shop, where he could draw water from the faucet.  The cell guards’ intelligence had been too limited to make them inquire of the brush shop guards about his habits.  Also, Gabriel, had feigned stupefaction while in the cell.  Thus he had simulated the effects of the drug, and had really thrown his tormentors off the track.  For months and months they were convinced that they were weakening his will and destroying his mentality, while as a matter of fact his reasoning powers and determination never had been more keen.

By bathing as often as possible, by taking regular and carefully planned calisthenics, by reading the best books in the prison library, by attention to every rule of health within his means, and by allowing himself no vices, not even his pipe, Gabriel now was emerging from the Bastile of Capitalism in a condition of mind and body so little impaired that he knew a few weeks would entirely restore him.  The good conduct allowance, or “copper,” which they had been forced to allow him for exemplary conduct, had cut ten months off his sentence.  And now in mid-August of 1925, there he stood, a free man again, with purpose still unshaken and with a woman by his side who shared his high ambition and asked no better lot than to work with him toward the one great aim—­Socialism!

Now, as these two walked side by side along the sunbaked street of the sweltering Southern town, Gabriel was saying: 

“So I haven’t changed as much as you expected?  I’m glad of that, Kate.  Only superficial changes, at most.  Just give me a little time to pull together and get my legs under me again, and—­forward march!  Charge the forts!  Eh, Catherine?”