Again he paused, as if his troubled conscience overpowered him, and then with a renewed effort that heavily taxed his fast ebbing vitality, he added, “Joe, for the love you bear for your mother, of whom you have spoken so often, swear now, before the Almighty, that you will from this moment forward shun the three evils which have brought me to this, and which are ’Bums, Booze and Boxcars’, and that you will not further associate with the criminals at the flat, for if you return to them, on account of this night’s work you will be forever one of their number.”  And there in the solitude of the night, kneeling beside his dying companion, with his arms uplifted towards the starry firmament, Joe solemnly swore that he would beware of “Bums, Booze and Boxcars”, and quit the very people whose acquaintance he had made through Slippery.

[Illustration:  And there in the solitude of the night, kneeling beside his dying companion, Joe solemnly swore to forever forsake the “Road.”]

For a moment all was silence, which was interrupted only by the gurgling of the blood as it welled up into the mortally wounded yegg’s throat, then came the pitifully human appeal from the lips of the dying man, “Joe, where are you, Joe?  Do not leave me alone, Joe, now that all have left me and everything is so dark before my eyes.”  Then after a brief pause he painfully stammered, “Joe, find your brother Jim, then both of you go back to your mother and be once more her boys.”  He again became silent and then, now that it was too late, he plainly showed, that although he was a despised yegg, there was one place in this wide world where there would be one true friend waiting in vain for his return, for he slowly added, “Joe, believe me, there is no friend like mother and no place like home.”

Then came another hemorrhage and a stream of his life blood shot into the air and then, with a last effort, he drew Joe’s hands to his parched, suffering lips, and while he covered them with kisses, the rattling in his throat increased, then decreased, and finally stopped—­he had expired.

When Boston Frank returned with the water, he only found his dead pal, as Joe, horror stricken by the dead man’s glassy stare, by the blood covered corpse, by the quietude of the night and all the horrors which had transpired, had fled into the night as if furies and demons were pursuing him, bent only upon placing as much space as possible between his living self and the gruesome tragedy he had left behind.  He climbed over fences and forced his way through hedges; forded creeks and swam streams, until from his frantic exertions he became so completely exhausted that when he fell into a clump of bushes he was unable to rise, and gradually sank into a deep sleep.