time he remembered being in doubt whether he
should not give the offender up to justice, for the pilfering, petty
though it had been, had been somewhat persistent, but he had taken the
more merciful course, and merely dismissed the boy. He had been in two
minds about it before, wondering whether it would not be better to let
Martin have a sharp lesson, but to-night he was thankful that he had not
done so. The mercy he had shown had come back to bless him also; he felt
a glow of thankfulness that the subject of his clemency had turned out so
well. Punishment often hardens the criminal, was one of his settled
convictions. But Morris--again his thoughts went back to Morris, who was
already standing on the verge of manhood, on the verge, too, he made no
doubt of married life and its joys and responsibilities. Mr. Taynton was
himself a bachelor, and the thought gave him not a moment of jealousy,
but a moment of void that ached a little at the thought of the common
human bliss which he had himself missed. How charming, too, was the girl
Madge Templeton, whom he had met, not for the first time, that evening.
He himself had guessed how things stood between the two before Morris had
confided in him, and it pleased him that his intuition was confirmed.
What a pity, however, that the two were not going to meet next day, that
she was out with her mother and would not get back till late. It would
have been a cooling thought in the hot office hours of to-morrow to
picture them sitting together in the garden at Falmer, or under one of
the cool deep-foliaged oaks in the park.

Then suddenly his face changed, the smile faded, but came back next
instant and broadened with a laugh. And the man who laughs when he is by
himself may certainly be supposed to have strong cause for amusement.

Mr. Taynton had come by this time to the West Pier, and a hundred yards
farther would bring him to Montpellier Road. But it was yet early, as he
saw (so bright was the moonlight) when he consulted his watch, and he
retraced his steps some fifty yards, and eventually rang at the door of a
big house of flats facing the sea, where his partner, who for the most
part, looked after the London branch of their business, had his
_pied-a-terre_. For the firm of Taynton and Mills was one of those
respectable and solid businesses that, beginning in the country, had
eventually been extended to town, and so far from its having its
headquarters in town and its branch in