So Justice, while she winks at crimes,
Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
_Hudibras._
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and
will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.--HENRY
WARD BEECHER.
About two o'clock on this day of the trial, when Geoffrey and all the
rest of the bank-clerks were hurrying through their work in order to get
out to attend the police court, Mr. Dearborn came in unexpectedly, and
talked to Hampstead for a while. He said that the prisoner Cresswell
was very ill, perhaps dying, and had begged him to go and bring Geoffrey
to see him--if only for a moment.
"All right," said Hampstead, "I'll speak to the manager about going, and
will then drop over with you."
He did so, and they walked to the police station together. They
descended into the basement, and Mr. Dearborn unlocked a cell which was
very dark inside.
"You'll find him in there," said the detective. "I'll have to keep the
door locked, of course, while you are with him."
Geoffrey entered, and the door was locked on the outside. He looked
around the cell, and then a fear struck him. He turned coolly to the
detective, who was still outside the bars, and said: "You have brought
me to the wrong cell. Cresswell is not in this one."
"Well, the fact is," said Mr. Dearborn, "a warrant was just now placed
in my hands for your arrest, and, as they say you are particularly good
both at running and the manly art, I thought a little stratagem might
work the thing in nice, quiet shape."
"Just so," said Hampstead, laughing. "Perhaps you are right. I don't
think you could catch me if I got started. Who issued the warrant, and
what is it about?"
"Here is the warrant. You are entitled to see it. An information was
laid, and that's all I know about it. You'll be called up in court in a
few minutes, and I must leave you now--to look after some other
business."
At three o'clock, when the court-room was packed almost to suffocation,
the magistrate mounted the bench, and Cresswell was brought up and
remanded until the next morning. The spectators were much disappointed
at not hearing the termination of the matter, but their interest revived
as they heard the magistrate say, "Bring in the other prisoner."
A dead silence followed, broken only by the measured tread of men's feet
in the corridor outside. The double doors opened, and there appeared
Geoffrey Hampstead handcuffed and accompanied by four huge policemen. In
ten minutes, any person in the court could easily sell his standing-room
at a dollar and a half a stand, or upward.
There was no hang-dog look about Geoffrey. His crest was high. It was
surprising to see how dignified a man could appear in handcuffs.
Suppressed indignation was so vividly stamped upon his face that all
gained the idea that the gentleman was suffering an outrage. As he
approached the dock, one of his guards laid his hand on his arm.
Hampstead stopped short and turned to the policeman as if he would eat
him:
"Take your hand off my arm!" he rasped out. The man did so in a hurry,
and the spectators were impressed by the incident.
A charge about the fifty thousand dollars was read out to Geoffrey,
similar to that in the Cresswell case. That he did, etc.--on, etc.--at,
etc.--feloniously, etc.--and all the rest of it.
Now Hampstead did not see how, when he was apparently innocent, and
another man practically convicted, he could possibly be thought guilty
also. The case against Cresswell had been so complete that it was
impossible for any one to doubt his guilt. Hampstead knew also that if
he were tried once now and acquitted, he never could be tried again for
the same offense. He had been fond of talking to Rankin about criminal
law, and on some points was better posted than most men. He did not know
whether Jack would be well enough to give evidence to-day, if at all,
and if, for want of proof or otherwise, the case against him failed now,
he would be safe forever. Jack might recover soon, and then the case
would be worse if he told all he knew. He did not engage a lawyer, as
this might seem as if he were doubtful and needed assistance. He was, he
thought, quite as well able to see loopholes of escape as a lawyer would
be, so long as they did not depend on technicalities. Altogether he had
decided, after his arrest and after careful thought, to take his trial
at once.
He elected to be tried before a police magistrate, said he was ready for
trial, and pleaded "not guilty."
About this time the manager of the Victoria Bank, who was very much
astonished and hurt at the proceedings taken against Geoffrey, leaned
over and asked the county attorney if he had much evidence against Mr.
Hampstead. The poor manager was beginning almost to doubt his own
honesty. Every person seemed guilty in this matter. As for Jack and
Hampstead, he would have previously been quite ready to have sworn to
his belief in their honesty.
"My dear sir," replied the county attorney, "I don't know anything about
it. Mr. Rankin came flying down in a cab, saw the prisoner Cresswell,
swore out a warrant, had Mr. Hampstead arrested, sent the detectives
flying about in all directions, and that's all I know about it. He is
running the entire show himself."
"Indeed!" said the manager. "I shall never be surprised at anything
again, after to-day."
Nobody knew but Rankin himself what was coming on. Several detectives
had had special work allotted to them, but this was all they knew, and
the small lawyer sat with apparent composure until it was time to call
his first witness.
Mr. St. George Le Mesurier Hector Northcote was the first witness
called, and his fashionable outfit created some amusement among the
"unwashed." Rankin, with a certain malignity, made him give his name in
full, which, together with his affected utterance, interested those who
were capable of smiling.
After some formal questions, Rankin unrolled a parcel, shook out a
waistcoat with a large pattern on it, and handed it to the witness.
"Did you ever see that waistcoat before?"
"Oh, yes. It belongs to Mr. Hampstead. At least it used to belong to
him."
"When did you see it last?"
"Up in his rooms a few evenings ago."
"That was the night of the day the fifty thousand dollars was stolen
from the bank?"
"Yes."
"What did you do with it then?"
"I took it out of his bedroom closet to give to a poor boy."
"Why did you do that?"
"I thought it was a kindness to Mr. Hampstead to take that very dreadful
waistcoat away from him. I took this and a number of other garments to
give to the boy."
"You were quite generous that night! Did Mr. Hampstead object?"
"Object? Oh, no! I should have said that he took them from me and gave
them to the boy himself."
"Now, why were you so generous with Mr. Hampstead's clothes, and why
should he consent to give them to the boy?"
This was getting painful for Sappy. His manager was standing, as he
said, plumb in front of him.
"Well, if I must tell unpleasant things," said Sappy, "the boy was sent
out that evening to get us a little wine, and I thought giving him that
waistcoat would be a satisfaction to all parties."
"You were perfectly right. You have given a great deal of satisfaction
to a great many people. So Mr. Hampstead was entertaining his friends
that night?"
"Yes. We dined with him at the club that evening, and adjourned
afterward to his rooms to have a little music."
"Ah! Just so. Seeing how pleasantly things had been going in the bank
that day, and that his particular friend Cresswell had decamped with
fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Hampstead was celebrating the occasion. Now,
I suppose that, taking in the cost of the dinners and the wine--or
rather, excuse me--the _music_, and all the rest of it, you got the
impression that Mr. Hampstead had a good deal of money that night?"
"That's none of your business," said Sappy, firing up. "Mr. Hampstead
spends his money like a gentleman. I suppose he did spend a good deal
that night, and generally does."
"Very good," said Rankin.
He then went on to ask questions about Hampstead's salary and his
probable expenses, but perhaps this was to kill time, for he kept
looking toward the door, as if he expected somebody to come in. Finally
he let poor Sappy depart in peace, after making him show beyond any
doubt that Geoffrey wore this waistcoat at the time of the theft at the
bank--that the garment was old fashioned, and that it had seemed
peculiar that Hampstead, a man of some fashion, should be wearing it.
Patsey Priest was now called, and he slunk in from an adjoining room, in
company with a policeman. He had a fixed impression in his mind that
Geoffrey was his prosecutor, and that he was going to be charged with
stealing liquors, cigars, tobacco, and clothes. He was prepared to prove
his innocence of all these crimes, but he trembled visibly. His mother
had put his oldest clothes upon him, as poverty, she thought, might
prove a good plea before the day was out. The difference between his
garments and those of the previous witness was striking. His skin, as
seen through the holes in his apparel, suggested how, by mere _laches_,
real estate could become personalty.
"Where were you on Wednesday night last, about one or two o'clock in the
evening?"
"I wus in Mr. 'Ampstead's rooms part of the time."
"Did you ever see that waistcoat before?"
"Yes, I did, and he gev it to me, so help me on fourteen Bibles, as I
kin prove by five or six gents right in front of me over there, and its
altogether wrong ye are fur to try and fix it on to a poor boy as has
to get his livin' honest and support his mother, and her a widder--"
"Stop, stop!" called Rankin. "Did you get this other waistcoat at the
same time?"
"Yes, I did, an' a lot more besides, an' I tuk them all up and gev them
to me mother just the same as I gives her all me wages and the hull of
the clothes an' more besides give me fur goin' round to the Rah-seen
House fur to buy the drinks--"
"That will do, that will do," interrupted Rankin. "You can go."
"Faith, I knew ye'd hev to discharge me, fur I'm as innercent as y'are
yerself."
Mrs. Priest was called.
She came in with more assurance now, as she had become convinced, from
seeing Hampstead in the dock and guarded by the police, that the matter
in question did not refer to her consumption of coal, or her legal right
to perquisites.
"Mrs. Priest, did you ever see that waistcoat before?" said Rankin.
"See it before! Didn't you take it out of me own hands not two hours
ago? What are ye after, man?"
Rankin explained, that the magistrate wished to know all about it.
"Well, I'll tell his lordship the hull story: Ye see, yer 'anor, the boy
gets the clothes from Mr. Geoffrey and brings them up to me last
Wednesday night begone and says they was give to him, an' the next day I
wus lookin' through them, and I thought I'd sell this weskit becas the
patthern is a thrifle large for a child, an' I puts me 'and into these
'ere pockets on the inside an' I pulls out a paper--"
"Stop! Is this the paper you found?"
"Yes, that's it; 'an I thought it might be of some use, as it hed
figures on it and writin'. An' I says to Mr. Renkin, when he come into
my room to-day fur to get a cup--"
"Never mind what I came in for," said Rankin, coloring.
"An' I says to Mr. Rankin, sez I, 'Is this paper any use, do you think,
to Mr. 'Ampstead.' An' he looks at it awful hard and sez, 'Where did yer
get it? An' then I ups and told him (for I wus quite innercent, and so
wus the boy) that I had got it out of the weskit--out of these 'ere
inside pockets. An' then I shows him that other weskit an' how the
lining of one weskit had been cut out and sewn onter the other--as
anybody can see as compares the two--an' I never saw any weskit with
four long pockets on the inside before, an' I wondered what they wus
fur.
"An' I hedn't got the words out of me mouth before Mr. Renkin turned as
white as the drippin' snow and says, 'My God!' an' he grabs the two
weskits widout me leave or license, an' also the paper, an' I thought
he'd break his neck down the stairs in the dark. An' that's all I know
about it until the cops brought me and the child here in the hack, after
we put on our best clothes fur to be decent to answer to the charge
before yer lordship; an' if that's all yer lordship wants ter know, I'd
like to axe yer lordship if there'll be anythin' comin' to me fur comin'
down here widout resistin' the cops?"
As Rankin finished with Mrs. Priest, the police magistrate reminded the
prisoner that he had the right to cross-examine the witness.
Hampstead smiled, and said he had no doubt all she said was true.
Rankin then read the marks on the piece of paper. It was a longish slip
of paper, about three inches wide, and had been cut off from a large
sheet of office letter-paper. There had been printing at the top of this
sheet when it was entire. On the piece cut off still remained the
printed words "Western Union." On the opposite side of the paper, which
seemed to have been used as a wrapper and fastened with a pin, were the
figures, in blue pencil, "$50,000," and, below, a direction or
memorandum: "For Mont. Teleg. Co'y. Toronto." These words had had a pen
passed through them.
The excitement caused by this evidence was increased when Hampstead
arose and requested to be allowed to withdraw his consent to be tried
before the magistrate.
"I see," he said, smiling, "that my friend Mr. Rankin has been led
astray by some facts which can be thoroughly well explained. But I must
have time and opportunity to get such evidence as I require."
The magistrate rather sternly replied that he had consented to his trial
to-day, and said he was ready for trial, and that the request for a
change would be refused. The trial must go on.
The Montreal Telegraph clerk was then called, and identified the wrapper
as the one that had been around the stolen fifty thousand dollars. He
had run his pen through the written words before depositing the money in
the Victoria Bank. He again identified by their numbers the two
one-thousand dollar bills found on Jack, and he was then told to stand
down until again required.
The receiving teller of the bank could not swear positively to the
wrapper. He remembered that there had been a paper around the bills with
blue writing on it, which he thought he had not removed when counting
the bills.
Rankin then requested the police to bring in John Cresswell.
Want of proper nourishment had had much to do with Jack's mental
weakness. Besides the exhaustion which he had suffered from, he had not,
until his friends looked after him, eaten or drunk anything for over
forty hours. He had neglected the food brought him by the police.
As the constable half supported him to the box, he was still a pitiable
object, in spite of the champagne the fellows had made him swallow. As
his bodily strength had come back under stimulant, his intellect had
returned also with proportional strength, which of course was not great.
His ideas as to what was going on were of the vaguest kind. He looked
surprised to see Geoffrey in custody, but smiled across the room to him
and nodded.
After he was sworn, Rankin asked him:
"You went away last Wednesday on a schooner called the North Star?"
"Yes."
"Did any person tell you to go in this way, instead of by steamer or
railway?"
"I think it was Geoffrey's suggestion at first. I had to go away on
private business. I think we arranged the manner of my going together."
"Did any person tell you to take your valises to the yacht club early on
Wednesday morning?"
"I think it was Hampstead's idea originally, and I thought it was a good
one."
"You wished to go away secretly?"
"Well, we discussed that point. I was going by rail, but Hampstead
thought the schooner was best."
"You evidently did everything he told you?"
"Certainly, I did," said Jack, as he smiled across to Geoffrey.
"Hampstead has the best head for management I know of."
"Quite so. No doubt about that! Now, since the accident to the boats in
the lake some bills were found upon you. Are those your bills?"
(producing them).
"Yes, they look like my bills. The seven one-hundred dollars I got
myself, and the two for one thousand each I got--" Jack stopped here and
looked troubled. He looked across at Geoffrey and remained silent. It
came to him for the first time that Hampstead was being charged with
something that had gone wrong in the bank about this money.
The magistrate said sharply "I wish to know where you got that money.
You will be good enough to answer without delay."
Jack looked worried. "My money was all in smallish bills, and either
Geoffrey or I (I forget which) suggested that I had better take these
two American one-thousand-dollar bills, as they would be smaller in my
pocket. He slipped these two out of a package of bills which I imagine
were all of the same denomination."
Rankin evidently was wishing to spin out the time, for he glanced at the
side door whenever it was opened.
He went on asking questions and showing that Geoffrey had been at the
bottom of everything, and in the mean time three men appeared in the
room, and one of them handed Rankin a parcel.
"During your trial this morning I think I heard you say that the bills
you saw on Hampstead's desk were all dark-green colored?"
"I think they were all the same color as these two. He ran his finger
over them as he drew these two out."
"I have some money here," said Rankin. "Does this package look anything
like the one you then saw?"
"I could not swear to it. It looks like it."
Even the magistrate was excited now. The news had flown through the
business part of the city that Geoffrey Hampstead had been arrested and
was on trial for stealing the fifty thousand dollars. The news stirred
men as if the post-office had been blown up with dynamite. The
court-room was jammed. When word had been passed outside that things
looked bad for Hampstead, as much as five dollars was paid by a broker
for standing room in the court. It had also become known that Maurice
Rankin had caused the arrest to be made himself, and that nobody but he
knew what could be proved. People thought at first that the bank
authorities were forcing the prosecution, and wondered that they had not
employed an older man. The fact that this young sprig, professionally
unknown, had assumed the entire responsibility himself, gave a greater
interest to the proceedings.
The magistrate leaned over his desk and asked quietly:
"What money is that you have there, Mr. Rankin?"
Maurice's naturally incisive voice sounded like a bell in the death-like
stillness of the court-room.
"These," he said, "are what I will prove to be the forty-eight
thousand-dollar bills stolen from the bank."
The pent-up excitement could be restrained no longer. A sound, half
cheer and half yell, filled the room.
Rankin had not been idle after he left Mrs. Priest that day. He first
went in a cab to Jack, and simply asked him if Geoffrey had worn the
large-patterned waistcoat on the day he went away. Jack remembered
hearing Sappy talking about his wearing it. Rankin then drove to the
Montreal Telegraph clerk, who identified the wrapper. Then he had the
warrant issued for Hampstead's arrest, and also subpoenas, which were
handed to different policemen for service, with instructions to bring
the witnesses with them if possible. The Priests, mother and son, he
secured by having a constable bring them in a cab. He then requested the
magistrate to hear the case at once.
He supposed, rightly enough, that Hampstead, on becoming aware that the
numbers of the stolen bills were all known would be afraid to pass any
of them, and would still have the money somewhere in his possession. So
he had three detectives sent with a search warrant to break in
Geoffrey's door and search for it. He thought it was by no means certain
that they would find the money, and he was anxious on this point, but he
knew that, even if he failed to secure a conviction against Hampstead,
he had at least sufficient evidence to render Jack's conviction
doubtful. In the case against Hampstead, Jack's evidence would be heard
in full, and Rankin felt satisfied that in some way it would explain
away the terribly damaging case that had been made out against him in
the morning.
The sudden shout in the court had been so full of sympathy for Jack and
admiration for Rankin's cleverness that for the first time in his
magisterial existence "His Worship" forgot to check it, and the call to
order by the police was of the weakest kind. All the bank-clerks of the
city were jammed into that room, and for a moment Jack's friends were
wild.
A few more questions were put to Jack, but only to improve his position
before the public as to the charge against himself.
"Are you aware that you have been made a victim of in a matter where the
Victoria Bank was robbed of fifty thousand dollars?"
"No," said Jack, looking dazed. "I am not."
"Are you aware that you were tried this morning for stealing that
money?"
"I seemed at times to know that something was wrong. Once I knew I was
charged with stealing something or other, but I did not know or care. I
must have been unconscious after the collision in the lake. The first
thing I knew of, they said we were at Port Dalhousie. We must have
sailed there with nothing drawing but the forward canvas, and that must
have taken a good while."
Jack was now allowed to stand down, but he was not removed from the
court-room.
To clear up Jack's record thoroughly, Rankin called Detective Dearborn
and, before the magistrate stopped the examination as being irrelevant,
he succeeded in showing that Jack had been delirious for twelve hours
after his arrest. The fact that Dearborn had not mentioned these
circumstances placed him in a rather bad light with the audience, while
it showed once again what a common habit it is with the police to
suppress and even distort facts in order to secure a conviction.
The telegraph clerk identified the recovered forty-eight bills, and the
receiving teller, gave the same evidence as in the Cresswell case, and
then the detective who found the money in Hampstead's room was called.
As soon as he heard his first words, Geoffrey knew what was coming and
rose to his feet and addressed the magistrate:
"I suppose, Your Worship, that it is not too late to withdraw my plea of
not guilty and at this late hour plead guilty. This will be my only
opportunity to cast a full light on this case, and, if I may be
permitted, I will do so."
The magistrate nodded. Geoffrey continued:
"Of course, it is perfectly clear that Cresswell is quite innocent. For
private reasons, in a matter that was entirely honorable to himself,
Cresswell wished to leave Canada. He was going through the States to
California, and did not intend to return, and would have resisted being
brought back to Canada. There was no law existing by which he could be
extradited. He could only be brought back by his own consent. From the
way I sent him on the schooner, his arrest before arriving in the United
States was in the highest degree improbable. If he had afterward been
arrested in the States I could have at once arranged to be sent by the
bank to persuade him to return. I had it all planned that he never
should return. He would have done as I told him. Even if he insisted on
coming back I then would be safe in the States. Of course, I did not
know that identification could be made of the bills--which could not
have been foreseen--and my object in giving him two of them was that
suspicion would rest temporarily on him, which might be necessary to
give me time to escape. As it turned out, if Cresswell had insisted on
returning to Canada he would be returning to certain conviction--part of
the identified money being found on him.
"So far I speak only of my intentions at the time of the theft. But I
hope no one will think I would allow my old friend Jack Cresswell to go
to jail under sentence for my misdeeds. To-night I intended to cross the
lake in a small boat and then telegraph to the bank where to find all
the money at my chambers. This, with a letter of explanation, would have
acquitted Jack. I had to save him--also myself, from imprisonment; but
there was another matter worth far more than the money to me which I
hoped to be able to eventually make right. If I had got away to-night
the bank would have had its money to-morrow.
"On the day before the theft I had lost all my twelve years' earnings
and profits in speculation. If I had been able to hold my stocks until
the evening of the theft I would have made over seventy-five thousand
dollars. For weeks during the excitement preceding my loss I had been
drinking a great deal, and when the chance came to recoup myself from
the bank I seemed to take the money almost as a matter of right."
As Geoffrey continued he was looking up out of the window, evidently
oblivious of the crowd about him, thinking the thing out, as if
confessing to himself.
"I know that without the liquor I never would have stolen, and that with
it I became--"
His face grew bitter as he thought of his thieving Tartar uncle and his
mother who could not be prevented from stealing. But he pulled himself
together and continued: "It would have been open to me to call men from
this gathering to give evidence as to my previous character, and I have
no hesitation in leaving this point in your hands if it will do anything
to shorten my sentence. On this ground only am I entitled to ask for
your consideration, and you will be doing a kindness if you will pass
sentence at once."
As Hampstead said these words he looked abstractedly around for the last
time upon the scores of former friends who now averted their faces.
There was no bravado in his appearance. He held himself erect, as he
always did, and his face was impenetrable. His eyes claimed acquaintance
with none who met his glance. Some smiled faintly, impressed as they
were with his bearing, but he seemed to look into them and past them, as
if saying to himself: "There's Brown, and there's Jones, and there's
Robinson, I wonder when I will ever see them again?"
There were men in that throng who knew, when Hampstead spoke of the
effects of the liquor on him, exactly what was meant, who knew from
personal experience that, if there is any devilish tendency in a man or
any hereditary predisposition to any kind of wrong-doing, alcohol will
bring it out, and these men could not refrain from some sympathy with
him who had partly explained his fall, and somehow there were none who
thought after Geoffrey's statement that he would have sacrificed Jack to
imprisonment under sentence.
The magistrate addressed him:
"Geoffrey Hampstead, I do not think there has been anything against your
character since you came to Toronto. That an intelligence such as yours
should have been prostituted to the uses to which you have put it is one
of the most melancholy things that ever came to my knowledge. I can not
think you belong to the criminal classes, and I would be glad to be out
of this matter altogether, because I feel how unable one may be to deal
for the best with a case like yours. It may be that if you were
liberated you would never risk your ruin again. I do not think you
would; but, in that case, this court might as well be closed and the
police disbanded. I am compelled to make your case exemplary, and I
sentence you to six years in the Kingston Penitentiary."
A dead silence followed, and then his former friends and acquaintances
began to go away. They went away quietly, not looking at each other.
There was something in the proceedings of the day that silenced them.
They had lost faith in one honest man and had found it again; and
another, on whom some nobility was stamped, they had seen condemned as a
convict. As they took their last look at the man whom they had often
envied and admired, they wished to escape observation. So many of them
were thinking how, at such a time in their lives, if things had not
luckily turned out as they did, they, too, might have fallen under some
kind of temptation, and they knew the sympathy that comes from secret
consciousness of what their own possibilities in guilt might have been.
Geoffrey received his sentence looking out of the window toward the blue
sky and the swallows that flew past. Every word that the magistrate had
said had in it the tone of a friend, which made it harder to bear. While
he heard it all vividly, he strained to keep his attention on the flying
swallows in order that he might not break down. Outside of that window,
and just in that direction, Margaret, the wife that never would be, was
waiting for him. The man's face was like ashes. Oh, the relief to have
dashed himself upon the floor when he thought of Margaret!
Yet he held out. He felt it would be better for him to be dead; but he
met his fate bravely, and now sought relief in another way. He caught
Rankin's eye, and motioned to him to come near.
With a face that was afraid to relax its tension, he said, with an
effort at something like his ordinary speech:
"Rankin, you forsook me sadly to-day, did you not? But I can still count
on you to do me a good turn--if only in return for to-day."
"Go on, Geoffrey. Yes, I have disliked you from the first. But now I
don't. You make people like you, no matter what you do. You take it like
a man. What do you want?"
Rankin could not command his countenance as Geoffrey could. Now that he
had accomplished the work of convicting him, it seemed terrible that one
who, with all his faults, appeared so manly a man, and so brave, should
be on his way to six years' darkness.
Geoffrey pulled him closer and whispered in his ear: "Go to Margaret--at
once--before she can read anything! Take a cab. Tell her all. Break it
to her. You can put it gently. Go to her now--let her know, fairly,
before you come away, that all my chances are gone--that she is
released--that I am nothing--now--but a dead man."
His head went down as the words were finished with a wild effort, and
his great frame shook convulsively for a moment. The thought of Margaret
killed him.
During the day, before his arrest, he had seen that he would have to
return at least part of the money to corroborate his story and to save
Jack. And he could not abscond with the balance, because that would mean
the loss of Margaret. By returning the money and saving himself from
imprisonment, he had hoped that eventually she would forgive him. And
now--
Maurice could not stand it. He said, hurriedly: "All right. I'll see you
to-morrow." And then he dashed off, out a side door, and into a cab. And
on the way to Margaret he wept like a child behind the carriage curtains
for the fate of the man whom he had convicted.