Edgar Rice Burroughs

“ I can’t do it.”
“No,” said the colonel, “you can’t. When you buy whisky, nowadays, you are usually compounding a felony. It’s certainly a rotten condition to obtain in the land of the free; but you’ve got to protect your accomplices. I shall not ask you again; but they’ll ask you in court, my boy.”
“All the good it ’ll do them!”
“I suppose so; but I’d hate to see my boy sent to the penitentiary.”
“You’d hate to be in court and hear him divulge the name of a man who had trusted him sufficiently to sell him whisky.”
“I’d rather see you go to the penitentiary!” ”

“ When you telephoned that you had been held to the Federal grand jury, she would scarcely believe it. She said there must be some mistake.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She asked whether Guy got there before you were held and I told her that you said Guy visited you in the jail. She seems so worried about the affair—just as if she were one of the family. She is such a dear girl! I think I grow to love her more and more every day.”
“Yes,” said Custer, non-committally.
“She asked me one rather peculiar question,” Eva went on. ”

“ Every one’s buying booze, or selling booze, or making booze. Every one’s breaking the damned old Eighteenth Amendment, and it’s got so it don’t seem like committing a crime, or anything like that. You know, Cus, that I wouldn’t do anything criminal, and, oh, God, what’ll Eva think?”
Guy covered his face with his hands and choked back a sob.
“Just what the devil are you talking about?” inquired Pennington. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been mixed up in—well, what do you know about that?” A sudden light had dawned upon Custer’s understanding. ”

“ She wouldn’t be humiliated—her life wouldn’t be ruined; and when I came back everything would be just as it was before. If you go, things will not be the same when you come back—they can never be the same again. ”