overed the
guilty one."

"Oh, my God!" It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact expression,
irrelevant in its naming of the Deity, but full in its exultation of
soul. Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed, as Cass had
done, and huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden conviction that
the crime had been brought home to her brother. Her lover was guiltless;
but to joy over it was a sin, inhuman, for was not Alan the thief, if
Mortimer were innocent?

Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's
side, put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at
him full of a shrinking horror.

"Poor little woman!" he said, "your big, tender heart will be the death
of you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither
Mortimer nor Alan took the money--it was Cass."

"They are both innocent?"

"Yes, both."

"Oh, my God, I thank Thee." She pulled herself up from the chair,
holding to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, "You did this;
you found the guilty man for me?"

Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that
the eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of
honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.

"How can I thank you--what can I do or say to repay you?" She knew what
it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.

"It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a
man of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty
years. I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free will.
In my love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I almost
committed a crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had made;
I knew that if I cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I struggled
with temptation and fell asleep still not conquering it. In my sleep I
dreamed--I don't think it was a dream--it was like a vision--you came
to me, and when I said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed me on the
forehead. I woke then, and the struggle had ceased--the temptation
had passed. I came down here, and Cass has confessed that he took the
money."

"Would you like it--would you think it wrong--it seems so little for me
to do--may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank you from
the bottom of my heart for making me so happy? It all seems like a dream
to me now."

For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his
shoulder,