d sunshine, so sometimes in late winter a day will come now
and then which is a harbinger of the not far-distant springtide, like
a promise, during present storm and stress, of better things to come.

Such a day, balmy and gloriously bright, found four people seated
together in the spacious, sunny morning-room of a great house on
Belleair Avenue. A young man, pale and wan as from a long illness, but
with a new steadiness and clarity born of suffering in his eyes; a
girl, slender and black-robed, her delicate face flushing with an
exquisite, spring-like color, her eyes soft and misty and spring-like,
too, in their starry fulfillment of love that has been tried and found
all-sufficing; another sable-clad figure, but clerically frocked and
portly; and the last, a keen-faced, kindly-eyed man approaching
middle-age--a man with sandy hair and a mustache just slightly tinged
with gray. He might, from his appearance and bearing, have been a
great teacher, a great philanthropist, a great statesman. But he was
none of these--or rather, let us say, he was all, and more. He was the
greatest factor for good which the age had produced, because he was
the greatest instrument of justice, the crime-detector of the
century.

The pale young man moved a little in his chair, and the girl laid her
hand caressingly upon his blue-veined one. She was seated close to
him--in fact, Anita was never willing, in these later days, to be so
far from Ramon that she could not reach out and touch him, as if to
assure herself that he was there, that he was safe from the enemies
who had encompassed them both, and that her ministering care might
shield him.

Doctor Franklin noted the movement, slight as it was, and cleared his
throat, importantly.

"Of course, my dear children," he began, impressively, "if it is your
earnest desire, I will perform the marriage ceremony for you here in
this room at noon to-morrow. But I trust you have both given the
matter careful thought--not, of course, as to the suitability of your
union, but the--I may say, the manner of it! A ceremony without a
social function, without the customary observances which, although
worldly and filled with pomp and vanity, nevertheless are befitted by
usage, in these mundane days, to those of your station in life, seems
slightly unconventional, almost--er--unseemly."

"But we don't care for the pomp and vanity, and the social observances,
and all the rest of it, do we, Ramon?" the girl