y treachery, duress, and fraud. Do you
wish to proclaim your own share publicly? I know all now. I have
all my father's dispatches, his cipher book, his telegrams from
you, and the last, from Randall Clayton."

"You are my wife," fiercely whispered Ferris.

"In name only," defiantly replied Alice Worthington. "You will
learn my father's last wishes later, and to your sorrow. You lied
when you said that Clayton led a vile life. You poisoned my father's
mind. Thank God! I am my own mistress now.

"I have friends who will protect me and punish you. I dare you ever
to claim me as your wife. Beyond that mere civil ceremony, the sale
of a soul for Senator Dunham's influence, you have never laid your
hand in mine."

"You cannot frighten me, Madame," bitterly retorted Ferris. "I hold
your father's good name in my power."

"Stop!" coldly rejoined the angered woman. "I have the whole history
of the past. My father repaired the wrong done with his own hand,
before his death.

"You betrayed Clayton, as your life comrade; you stole upon me,
a lonely child, with your wily flatteries. I believed you to be
true, and Clayton false. You murdered his good name, you estranged
him from us. You have branded his memory as a fugitive thief! And
you have failed, with your police, detectives, and lawyers, to
find a clue! One word of charity from you and the dead man's memory
would have been cleared of the stain of theft.

"And, the prison door yawns for you! You opened Clayton's desk,
stole his telegraph-book and papers, and have secreted them."

"It is false," snarled Ferris. "Too late," cried Alice Worthington.
"We have the office boy's evidence who saw you rifle his desk.
Touch that boy if you dare! He is under our protection! We obtained
copies from the Western Union of all the last telegrams sent and
received by my poor brother."

"He plotted this robbery months ago, and sent all those as a mere
decoy," faltered Ferris. "I was merely holding them back to assist
the police." Alice Worthington's lip curled in scorn.

"Why did you not search the roads to Cheyenne? Why did you not send
detectives over to Bay Ridge? Why did you not reveal your secret
find to the chief of police?"

Suddenly Ferris saw the jaws of the trap closing upon him.

"He has been murdered!" sobbed Alice. "The money may have been
hidden, the bank-book destroyed."

"By some of the bank's people," hesitatingly said Ferris.

"You alone knew all of these