kind to me when I was
little. I don't suppose there is anything in heaven or on earth that he's
afraid of."

"He is afraid of me."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it. He would give anything to be rid of me. But go on."

"With what?"

"Your past."

"Well, I'm something like him physically. We are both so strong that we
generally burst through rather than take the trouble to go round. I'm
honestly sorry for him. Not a human being to love or be loved by. He never
had a dog. I don't recollect my mother; she died when I was three; and
that death had something to do with the iron in his soul. Our old butler
used to tell me that Father cursed horribly, I mean blasphemously, when
they took the mother out of the house. There are some men like that, who
love terribly, away and beyond the average human ability. After the mother
died he plunged into the money game. He was always making it, piling it up
ruthlessly but honestly. Then that craving petered out, and he took a hand
in the collecting game. What will come next I don't know. As a boy I was
always afraid of him. He was kind to me, but in the abstract. I was like
an extra on the grocer's bill. He put me into the hands of a tutor--a
lovable old dreamer--and paid no more attention to me. He never put his
arms round me and told me fairy stories."

"Poor little boy! No fairy stories!"

"Nary a one until I began to have playmates."

"Do the ropes hurt?"

"They might if I were alone."

"What do you make of the beads?"

"Only that they have some strange value, or father wouldn't be after them.
Love beads! Doesn't sound half so plausible as Cunningham's version."

"That handsome man who limped?"

"Yes."

"A real adventurer--the sort one reads about!"

"And the queer thing about him, he keeps his word, too, for all his
business is a shady one. I don't suppose there is a painting or a jewel or
a book of the priceless sort that he doesn't know about, where it is and
if it can be got at. Some of his deals are aboveboard, but many of them
aren't. I'll wager these beads have a story of loot."

"What he steals doesn't hurt the poor."

"So long as the tigers fight among themselves and leave the goats alone,
it doesn't stir you. Is that it?"

"Possibly."

"And besides, he's a handsome beggar, if there ever was one."

"He has the face of an angel!"

"And the soul of a vandal!"--with a touch of irritability.

"Now you aren't fair. A vandal destroys things; this