h your broadly,
professionally charitable point of view, Doctor," he added with keen
enjoyment, "will, I am convinced, be delighted to know that Charley
Pennold is doing splendidly. He will develop in time into one of my
most trusted, capable operatives, I have no doubt. He has the
instinct, the real nose, for crime, but circumstances from his birth
and even before that, forced him on the wrong side of the fence. He
was, if you will pardon the vernacular, on the outside, looking in.
Now he's on the inside, looking out!"

"I sincerely trust so!" the minister responded frigidly and turned to
the others. "I will leave you now. If it is your irrevocable desire to
have the ceremony at noon to-morrow, I will make all the necessary
arrangements. In fact, I will telephone you later, when everything is
settled."

"Oh, thank you, Dr. Franklin! I knew you wouldn't fail us!" Anita
murmured. "Don't forget to tell Mrs. Franklin that she will hear from
me. She must surely come, you know!"

When the door had closed on the minister's broad, retreating back,
Ramon Hamilton turned with a suspicion of a flush in his wan cheeks,
to the detective.

"If I'd gone to any Sunday school he presided over, when I was a
kiddie, I'd have been a train-robber now!" he observed darkly. "I'm
glad you lit into him about young Pennold, Mr. Blaine. He started
it!"

"But think of the others!" Anita Lawton turned her face for a moment
to the spring-like day outside. "Mr. Mallowe dead in his cell from
apoplexy, Mr. Carlis imprisoned for life, Mac Alarney and all the rest
facing long years behind gray walls and iron bars--oh, I know it is
just; I remember what they did to my father and to me; and yet somehow
in this glorious sunshine and with all the ages and ages just as
bright, spreading before me, I can find charity and mercy in my heart
for all the world!"

"Charity and mercy," repeated Ramon soberly. "Yes, dearest. But not
liberty to continue their crimes--to do to others what they did to
us!"

A spasm of pain crossed his face, and she bent over him solicitously.

"Oh, what is it, Ramon? Speak to me!"

"Nothing, dear, it's all right now. Just a twinge of the old pain."

"Those murdering fiends, who made you suffer so!" she cried, and added
with feminine illogicality: "I'm _not_ sorry, after all, that they're
in prison! I'm glad they've got their just deserts. Oh, Ramon, I've
been afraid to distress you by asking you, but did you tell the trut