Once Beavis, maddened by inaction, determined to escape, and he managed to communicate his intention to his wife. She implored him not to make the attempt, which would be certain to fail, and which would therefore result in an addition to his term of imprisonment. He took her advice, and a day later found that one of the party of convicts who had planned a simultaneous dash for freedom was a spy in the pay of the governor of the prison, so that there never had been the slightest chance of success.
But even the longest sentence must come to an end, and after a period of separation which had seemed like eternity to both of them Beavis walked out of the prison gates a free man. The first person he saw was Dolores, dressed simply in black and looking more beautiful than ever. Without a word they went away arm in arm to begin life anew.
Beavis had a sense of humour, and he must have realized the funny side of the scene when Dolores proudly told him that she had scraped together the large sum of forty-eight dollars! To the man who had once refused to think of anything under a million this was a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, yet the impostor, who had paid for his sins, could find himself regarding her fortune with enthusiasm, and he could spend hours debating as to the best way to lay it out with advantage to themselves.
It was Dolores who decided their future. She had been brought up on a ranch and away from the crowded centres, so she voted for a small farm in a remote corner of the great United States, and Beavis willingly submitted. The Peralta estate and its twenty million pounds seemed like a dream now, and he would not have troubled to devote even an hour to a similar scheme even if it promised to produce twice as much.
Thus it was his wife's love that saved James Addison Beavis from himself, and made his name unfamiliar to the police. His one great adventure in crime had met with disaster, and ever afterwards he was content with the fortune the labour of his hands earned for him.
According to his own description of himself, James Greenacre was a very respectable grocer, a lenient creditor, and one of the most popular residents in the parish of Camberwell; and to prove the latter statement he pointed to the fact that he had been elected one of the overseers of the parish by a substantial majority.