“I wasn’t quite sure I could do it,” said he, rather proudly.  “I suppose my feet will go to sleep in a very short time, but I am assuming, Cassius, that you are too much of a gentleman to attack a man whose feet are asleep.”

“I wouldn’t even attack you if they were snoring,” said Cassius, grinning in spite of himself.  “Say, this certainly beats anything I’ve ever come up against.  If one of my pals was to happen to look in here right now and see me with my feet in these drawers and you squattin’ on yours,—­well, I can’t help laughin’ myself, and God knows I hate to.”

“You were saying a little while ago,” said Mr. Yollop, shifting his position slightly, “that you rather fancy the idea of being arrested.  Isn’t that a little quixotic, Mr. Smilk?”

“Huh?”

“I mean to say, do you expect me to believe you when you say you relish being arrested?”

“I don’t care a whoop whether you believe it or not.  It’s true.”

“Have you no fear of the law?”

“Bless your heart, sir, I don’t know how I’d keep body and soul together if it wasn’t for the law.  If people would only let the law alone, I’d be one of the happiest guys on earth.  But, damn ’em, they won’t let it alone.  First, they put their heads together and frame up this blasted parole game on us.  Just about the time we begin to think we’re comfortably settled up the river, ’long cmes some doggone home-wrecker and gets us out on parole.  Then we got to go to work and begin all over again.  Sometimes, the way things are nowadays, it takes months to get back into the pen again.  We got to live, ain’t we?  We got to eat, ain’t we?  Well, there you are.  Why can’t they leave us alone instead of drivin’ us out into a cold, unfeelin’ world where we got to either steal or starve to death?  There wouldn’t be one tenth as much stealin’ and murderin’ as there is if they didn’t force us into it.  Why, doggone it, I’ve seen some of the most cruel and pitiful sights you ever heard of up there at Sing Sing.  Fellers leadin’ a perfectly honest life suddenly chucked out into a world full of vice and iniquity and forced—­absolutely forced,—­into a life of crime.  There they were, livin’ a quiet, peaceful life, harmin’ nobody, and bing! they wake up some mornin’ and find themselves homeless.  Do you realize what that means, Mr. Strumpet?  It means—­”

“Yollop, if you please.”

“It means they got to go out and slug some innocent citizen, some poor guy that had nothing whatever to do with drivin’ them out, and then if they happen to be caught they got to go through with all the uncertainty of a trial by jury, never knowin’ but what some pin-headed juror will stick out for acquittal and make it necessary to go through with it all over again.  And more than that, they got to listen to the testimony of a lot of policemen, and their own derned fool lawyers, tryin’ to deprive them of their bread and butter, and the judge’s instructions that nobody pays