nventional, with never a distraction due to imagination and sympathy.
Just now, too, he was experiencing a keen irritation against himself
because of the manner in which he had been sensible to the influence
of her protestation, despite his will to the contrary. That irritation
against himself only reacted against the girl, and caused him to
steel his heart to resist any tendency toward commiseration. So, this
declaration of innocence was made quite in vain--indeed, served rather
to strengthen his disfavor toward the complainant, and to make his
manner harsher when she voiced the pitiful question over which she had
wondered and grieved.

"Why did you ask the judge to send me to prison?"

"The thieving that has been going on in this store for over a year has
got to stop," Gilder answered emphatically, with all his usual energy
of manner restored. As he spoke, he raised his eyes and met the girl's
glance fairly. Thought of the robberies was quite enough to make him
pitiless toward the offender.

"Sending me to prison won't stop it," Mary Turner said, drearily.

"Perhaps not," Gilder sternly retorted. "But the discovery and
punishment of the other guilty ones will." His manner changed to a
business-like alertness. "You sent word to me that you could tell me how
to stop the thefts in the store. Well, my girl, do this, and, while I
can make no definite promise, I'll see what can be done about getting
you out of your present difficulty." He picked up a pencil, pulled a
pad of blank paper convenient to his hand, and looked at the girl
expectantly, with aggressive inquiry in his gaze. "Tell me now," he
concluded, "who were your pals?"

The matter-of-fact manner of this man who had unwittingly wronged her so
frightfully was the last straw on the girl's burden of suffering. Under
it, her patient endurance broke, and she cried out in a voice of utter
despair that caused Gilder to start nervously, and even impelled the
stolid officer to a frown of remonstrance.

"I have no pals!" she ejaculated, furiously. "I never stole anything in
my life. Must I go on telling you over and over again?" Her voice rose
in a wail of misery. "Oh, why won't any one believe me?"

Gilder was much offended by this display of an hysterical grief, which
seemed to his phlegmatic temperament altogether unwarranted by the
circumstances. He spoke decisively.

"Unless you can control yourself, you must go." He pushed away the pad
of paper, and tossed t