t his lips; "or mabbe--mabbe twenty."

Pale Face Harry stirred uneasily.

"There's the other way," he said without looking up, his eyes on his
finger nail that traced the grain of the wood again. "Get the money and
the sparklers all done up and addressed to the ones they came from, send
'em off in a bunch to Thornton--and we fly the coop before he gets them,
disappear, fade away--and take our chances of getting caught."

"An' den it's all off wid me an' Mamie"--the Flopper's face grew hard.
"Nix on dat! Dat don't go!"

"We cannot do that, Harry," said Helena, in a tired voice. "There
is--the Patriarch."

"Yes," said Madison, beginning his stride up and down the room again.
"After all, whether we could give back the money without being caught,
or whether we couldn't, is not the vital thing; there is--the
Patriarch."

Helena's eyes were on the silent figure in the shadows by the fireplace.

"If--if it were not for him," she said, "I think that perhaps--perhaps I
might be brave enough to confess it all, and--and not try to escape
from the punishment that I deserve. But he would know--he cannot see,
nor hear, nor speak, but he would know--as he seems so strangely, so
wonderfully, so supernaturally to know and understand everything. And,
oh, he means so much to me, to us all, for it is he, more than any one
else, who has saved us from--from what we were. And he loves us. It
would shatter his faith, ruin all that his life has meant to him,
and--and we cannot bring him grief and sorrow like that. Oh, what can we
do! What _can_ we do! We cannot stop--and we cannot go on! We cannot
stay here even if we returned the money successfully, and we cannot stay
here if we kept it as it is; for things would still have to go on as
they are, even if we didn't mean to steal any more, no matter what we
might say or do, for it's beyond our control now, and to stay means that
we should still have to live and lead our double lives, still have to
practise hypocrisy and deceit, and--and I cannot--we cannot do that any
more. And the only way to get away from it all is to run away--and we
can't do that, either! There is--the Patriarch. We cannot leave him--to
break his heart--with none he loves to care for him. We can't do that.
He is a very old, old man, and--and I think he has been happy with us,
and--and we must make him happy always as long as he lives. We cannot go
away and leave him. We can't do that." Then, in a heartbroken,
despairi