boy's body in the great glass opposite and heard my own voice
break into something I'd never heard before.

Tom stood at last with the handcuffs on.

"It's your own fault, you damned little chump!" he said to me, as they
went out.

You lie, Mag Monahan, he's no such thing! He may be a hard man to live
with, but he's mine--my Tom--my Tom!

What? Latimer?

Well, do you know, it's funny about him. He'd told the cop that I'd
peached--peached on Tom! So they went off without me.

Why?

That's what he said himself when we were alone.

"In order to insure for myself another of your most interesting visits,
I suppose, Miss--not Omar? All right.... Tell me, can I do nothing
for you? Aren't you sick of this sort of life?"

"Get Tom out of jail."

He shook his head.

"I'm too good a friend of yours to do you such a turn."

"I don't want any friend that isn't Tom's."

He threw the pistol from him and pulled himself up, till he sat looking
at me.

"In heaven's name, what can you see in a fellow like that?"

"What's that to you?" I turned to go.

"To me? Things of that sort are nothing, of course, to me--me, that
'luckless Pot He marr'd in making.' But, tell me--can a girl like you
tell the truth? What made you hesitate when that fellow told you with
his eyes to murder me?"

"How did you know?"

"How? The glass. See over yonder. I could watch every expression on
both your faces. What was it--what was it, child, that made you--oh,
if you owe me a single heart-beat of gratitude, tell me the truth!"

"You've said it yourself."

"What?"

"That line we read the other night about 'the luckless Pot'."

His face went gray and he fell back on his pillows. The strenuous life
we'd been leading him, Tom and I, was too much for him, I guess.

Do you know, I really felt sorry I'd said it. But he is a cripple.
Did he expect me to say he was big and strong and dashing--like Tom?

I left him there and got out and away. But do you know what I saw,
Mag, beside his bed, just as Burnett came to put me out?

My old blue coat with the buttons--the bell-boy's coat I'd left in the
housekeeper's room when I borrowed her Sunday rig. The coat was
hanging over a chair, and right by it, on a table, was that big book
with a picture covering every page, still open at that verse about

Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!

IV.

No--no--no! No more whining from Nance Olden. Listen to what I've got