cket
and, running down the stairs, was gone.

Then, after having lighted another cigarette, Soapy descended to
M'Ginnis's dingy office, where having dragged away the desk, he brought
a chair and sat with his ear against the safe, turning the combination
lock with long, delicate fingers. To and fro he turned it, very
patiently hearkening to the soft clicks the mechanism gave forth while
the cigarette smouldered between his pallid lips. Soapy, among other
accomplishments, was a yeggman renowned in the profession, and very soon
the heavy door swung softly back, and Soapy became lost in study. Money
there was and valuables of many kinds, and these he didn't trouble with,
but to the papers he gave a scrupulous attention; sometimes as he read
his white eyelids fluttered somewhat, and sometimes the dangling
cigarette quivered. Presently he arose and bore these many papers to the
sheet iron upon which stood the rusty stove; here he piled them and set
them alight and stood watching until they were reduced to a heap of
charred ash. Then, returning to the safe, he took out a bundle of
letters tied up in a faded blue ribbon, and seating himself at
M'Ginnis's desk, he slipped off the ribbon and very methodically began
to read these letters one after the other.

But as he read the humble entreaties, the passionate pleading of those
written words, blotted and smeared with the bitter tears of a woman's
poignant shame and anguish, Soapy's pendent cigarette fell to the floor
and lay there smouldering and forgotten, and his lips were drawn back
from sharp, white teeth--pallid lips contorted in a grin the more awful
because of the great drops that welled from the fierce, half-closed
eyes. Every letter he read and every word, then very methodically set
them back within the faded blue ribbon and sat staring down at them with
eyes wider open than usual--eyes that saw back into the past. And as he
sat thus, staring at what had been, he repeated a sentence to himself
over and over again at regular intervals, speaking with a soft
inflection none had ever heard from him before:

"Poor little Maggie--poor little kid!"

CHAPTER XLII

TELLS HOW RAVENSLEE BROKE HIS WORD AND WHY

"Past eleven o'clock, dear," said Hermione.

"Still so early?" sighed Ravenslee.

They were sitting alone in the fire glow, so near that by moving his
hand he could touch her where she sat curled up in the great armchair;
but he did not reach out his hand be