Gordon Young

“ His voice almost broke at that.
“Ellis,” I told him, more gently than I usually speak to any one, “most men's troubles in this world come because they trust women. You've caught it the other way round. Cora never knew the truth about the Cornwalls. Your wife never told her, at least not enough to brace her up against their lies and what she mistook for generosity. You see, they are a bad lot, but Joseph knows he's sick and likely to die one of these days, and a little bit of conscience has been fermenting down inside him. ”

“ The guard in the penitentiary swore he, Ellis, had said he would get both his wife and that fellow Smithers.
Ellis admitted he had threatened Smithers—never his wife.
The ways of woman are strange, incomprehensible. I could not understand why Mrs. Ellis had not mentioned the black box to him, but I eventually learned—or learned enough to surmise—that Daniel Cornwall had, when she was using it as a lever to make him pry Ellis from the prison, exacted from her the promise to tell no one that she had it. ”

“ I believe that the prison system is designed to teach a man such caution, is it not?”
He replied by swearing at me and bracing himself as if to jump. He was considerate enough, however, to tell me that there was just one way that I could escape being beaten-up—that was to give him the little black steel box.
“Indeed?”
He cursed me. He was rather infuriated because I did not seem to be frightened. He told me that he would have killed me but he had promised the Governor not to kill anybody.
“I see. Governor Walsh let you out on condition that you would steal for him.” ”