ed at himself in the mirror.

"Seems to me," he said, "I've changed. Seems to me I don't look so
much--like hell, as I did. What do you think?"

"I think, Blizzard," said Dr. Ferris, "that when you were run over as a
child you hurt your head. I think that even if I hadn't cut off your
legs you would have grown up an enemy of society. I think that up to the
time of your accident, and since you have come out of ether just now,
are the only two periods in your life when you have been sane, and
accountable for your actions. Between these two periods, as I see it,
you were insane--clever, shrewd--all that--but insane nevertheless. I
think this--I _know_ it. Even the expression of your face has changed.
You look like an honest man, a man to be trusted, an able man, a kind
man, the kind of man you were meant to be--a good man."

"You really think that?"

"It isn't what I think, after all; it's what _you_ feel. Do you wish to
be kind to people--friends with them? To do good?"

"That is the way I feel _now_. But, doctor--will it last?"

"It's got to last. Blizzard. And you've got to stop talking."

"But will they give me a chance? Lichtenstein could send me to the chair
if he wanted to."

"He won't do that. He will _understand_."

"I should like Miss Barbara to feel kindly toward me."

"She will. I hope that your mind has changed about her, too?"

"That," said Blizzard, "is between me and my conscience. Whatever I feel
toward her will never trouble her again."

XLVIII

With O'Hagan dead and Blizzard turned penitent, the bottom of course
fell clean out of the scheme to loot Maiden Lane and the Sub-Treasury.
But the work of Lichtenstein and his agents had not been in vain. Like
the man in the opera Lichtenstein had a little "list." The
lieutenant-governor soon retired into private life. He gave out that he
wished to devote the remainder of his life to philanthropic enterprises.
The police commissioner resigned, owing to ill health. Others who had
counted too many unhatched chicks went into bankruptcy. Some thousands
of discontents in the West who had been promised lucrative work in New
York, about January 15th, were advised to stick to their jobs, and to
keep their mouths shut. The two blind cripples who had delved for so
many years in Blizzard's cellars were brought up into the light and
cared for. Miss Marion O'Brien went home to England with an unusually
large pot of savings, and married a man who spent t