The manner of the fellow was so insincere that he could find no satisfaction in talking with him.

Big Bob, however, did not go away.

Instead, he sat down on a packing box which stood in the corner of the room and stuck the candle he carried up on the floor, under the window ledge so the wind would not extinguish it, in a pool of its own grease.
"If Cameron gets well," he said, "he'll be likely to forgive you if you do the right thing now." No reply from the prisoner, sitting not far from the window, listening for another wolf call from the mountain.
"Cameron has always been your friend," the other went on.
"Indeed he has!" exclaimed the boy, almost involuntarily testifying to the kindness of the man who had taken him from the streets and given him a chance in life.
"He took you from the gutter ?" Fremont looked out into the rain, only faintly seen in the glimmer of the flaring candle, and made no reply.
"He took you into his family ?" Fremont arose and went nearer to the opening where the sash had been, and stood for an instant with the rain beating on his face.
"How did he come to do it ?" Fremont began to see a purpose in this strange form of questioning.
Nestor had asked questions similar to these, and had suggested that Mother Scanlon, the woman who had cared for him in a rough way at one time, be looked up on their return to New York.

Why this suggestion?
"Where did you first see Cameron ?" The voice of the renegade was threatening.

Fremont heard only the sweep of the rain outside for a moment, and then the voice of the guard came through the sashless window opening.
"I'm going in to warm up a bit," he said.
"All right," the renegade replied.