His advice had not been altogether wasted on me. I got into the habit of thinking things over carefully. The trouble was I didn’t always follow out my conclusions. I knew I was taking a chance staying in Canada after my escape; yet I stayed. I had long realized that my every act was wrong and criminal; yet I never thought of changing my ways. After thinking it all over with all the clarity and logic and fairness I could command, I was convinced that nobody but myself was to blame, and that I had just drifted along from one thing to another until I was on the rocks. I hadn’t been forced into this life, and this predicament, by any set of circumstances or any power beyond my control. I had traveled along this road largely of my own free will, and it followed that I could get on the right road any time I willed it.

Strangely enough, I didn’t will to do it then and there. It seemed enough to know and feel I could do it if I wanted to. No use making resolutions until my sentence of two years was in. I would wait and see what that brought forth.

The same train that I was arrested on, in charge of the conductor I gave the bill to, carried me to the prison at New Westminster. My Scotch jailer loaded me with irons and handcuffed me to a seat to make sure of me and he delivered me safely. At the town of New Westminster I looked about me with interest; it was my birthplace. My parents were married in the United States, but spent the first year of their married life in British Columbia, where my father had some small business interests. He was a British subject and never took the trouble to become an American. That left me a subject of Great Britain, which I still am.