Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/204



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.