Daybreak found me still wandering in the streets, haunted by the fear that the police might already be upon my track and furious at the thought that one foolish step should have changed me from a prosperous and powerful member of the bar into a fugitive.

Often in earlier days I had pitied the wretches who would come slinking into our office after nightfall, empty their pockets of gold and notes--taken often, no doubt, by force or fraud from others--and pour it out before us, begging for our aid to save them from punishment.

It seemed incredible to me that human beings should have staked their liberty and often their lives for a few wretched dollars.

Outcasts, they skulked through existence, forced, once they had begun, to go on and on committing crimes--on the one hand to live, and on the other to pay tribute to Gottlieb and myself, who alone stood between them and jail.

How they had cringed to us.