e the mask of respectability and
told Ailsa Lorne the truth about himself! Of his Apache times--of
his Vanishing Cracksman's days--and, in the telling, had watched
the light die out of her dear eyes and dread of him darken them,
when she knew.

But not for always, thank God! For, in later days--when Time had
lessened the shock, when she came to know him better, when the
threads of their two lives had become more closely woven, and the
hope had grown to be something more than a mere possibility....

He laughed aloud, remembering, and with a sudden rush of animal
spirits twitched off his hat, flung it up and caught it as it fell,
after the manner of a happy boy.

God, what a world--what a glorious, glorious world! All things were
possible in it if a man but walked straight and knew how to wait.

Well, please God, a part, at least, of _his_ long waiting would be
over in another month. _She_ would be back in England then--her
long visit to the Hawksleys ended and nothing before her now but
the pleasant excitement of trousseau days. For the coming autumn
would see the final act of restitution made, the last Vanishing
Cracksman debt paid, to the uttermost farthing; and when that time
came.... He flung up his hat again and shouted from sheer excess of
joy, and forged on through the mist and darkness whistling.

His way lay across the great common to the Vale of Health district,
and thence down a slanting road and a sloping street to the
Hampstead Heath Station of the Tube Railway, and he covered the
distance to such good effect that half-past eleven found him
"down under," swaying to the rhythmic movement of an electric
train and arrowing through the earth at a lively clip.

Ten minutes later he changed over to yet another underground system,
swung on for half an hour or so through gloom and bad air and the
musty smell of a damp tunnel before the drop of the land and the
rise of the roadbed carried the train out into the open and the air
came fresh and sweet and pure, as God made it, over field and flood
and dewy garden spaces; and away to the west a prickle of lights
on a quiet river told where the stars mirrored themselves in the
glass of Father Thames.

At a toy station in the hush and loneliness of the pleasant country
ways his long ride came to an end at last, and he swung off into
the balm and fragrance of the night to face a two-mile walk along
quiet, shadow-filled lanes and over wet wastes of young bracken to