ing
on with this blackguard?'

"`Why, I think so,' answered my unhappy colleague flippantly.
`I think you and I are bigger blackguards than he is,
whatever he is.'

"`I am a burglar,' explained the big creature quite calmly.
`I am a member of the Fabian Society. I take back the wealth stolen
by the capitalist, not by sweeping civil war and revolution, but by reform
fitted to the special occasion--here a little and there a little.
Do you see that fifth house along the terrace with the flat roof?
I'm permeating that one to-night.'

"`Whether this is a crime or a joke,' I cried, `I desire to be quit of it.'

"`The ladder is just behind you,' answered the creature
with horrible courtesy; `and, before you go, do let me give
you my card.'

"If I had had the presence of mind to show any proper spirit I
should have flung it away, though any adequate gesture of the kind
would have gravely affected my equilibrium upon the wall.
As it was, in the wildness of the moment, I put it in my
waistcoat pocket, and, picking my way back by wall and ladder,
landed in the respectable streets once more. Not before, however,
I had seen with my own eyes the two awful and lamentable facts--
that the burglar was climbing up a slanting roof towards
the chimneys, and that Raymond Percy (a priest of God and,
what was worse, a gentleman) was crawling up after him.
I have never seen either of them since that day.

"In consequence of this soul-searching experience I severed my
connection with the wild set. I am far from saying that every
member of the Christian Social Union must necessarily be a burglar.
I have no right to bring any such charge. But it gave me a hint
of what such courses may lead to in many cases; and I saw them no more.

"I have only to add that the photograph you enclose, taken by a
Mr. Inglewood, is undoubtedly that of the burglar in question.
When I got home that night I looked at his card, and he was inscribed
there under the name of Innocent Smith.--Yours faithfully,
"John Clement Hawkins."

Moon merely went through the form of glancing at the paper. He knew that
the prosecutors could not have invented so heavy a document; that Moses Gould
(for one) could no more write like a canon than he could read like one.
After handing it back he rose to open the defence on the burglary charge.

"We wish," said Michael, "to give all reasonable facilities to
the prosecution; especially a