cells, handcuffed to their benches. They had
just come out of the sweat-box where the police
had been bullying and threatening them for hours
in an effort to make them tell on the other members
of the gang, and they were bruised and battered.
Tatters looked more like a pirate than the
fifteen-year-old grammar school boy he was.
A picture of uncleanliness, he scowled at me
out of sullen black eyes, and the sinister effect
was increased by the livid bruises on his swarthy
face. I talked with him, but could get nothing
out of him. His lips were padlocked, for he was
plainly suspicious of me.
“Lee Martin presented a very different appearance. He was slight, fair, and scrupulously neat, despite the unutterable prison filth. About him was an air of childish innocence hard to reconcile with his established reputation as the most expert and reckless boy criminal within a thousand miles. There was something peculiarly winning about him. I have never met so interesting a boy, or one so full of vital, human experiences learned in the hard school of life. He had gentle, blue eyes, just now glaring with hate. It was an expression I was to see in them often during the next few months, for hatred and revenge were then the dominant emotions of his life.
