ns as to the girl had never for one minute dwelt in his
furthest fancy. He had thought speculatively of the possible
complicity of the other women of the household, but never of hers.
They were all very constant in their church attendance; indeed,
Carroll had given quite a sum towards the Sunday-school library, and
he had even heard suggestions as to the advisability of making him
superintendent and displacing the present incumbent, who was
superannuated. Sometimes in church Anderson had glanced keenly from
under the quiet droop of languid lids at the Carrolls sitting in
their gay fluff and flutter of silks and muslins and laces, and
wondered, especially concerning Mrs. Carroll and her sister-in-law.
It seemed almost inconceivable that they were ignorant, and if not,
how entirely innocent! And then the expressions of their pretty,
childish faces disarmed him as they sat there, their dark, graceful
heads drooping before the divine teaching with gentle acquiescence
like a row of flowers. But there was something about the fearless
lift to Charlotte's head and the clear regard of her dark eyes which
separated her from the others. She bloomed by herself, individual,
marked by her own characteristics. He thought of her passionate
assertion of the principles of her home training with pity and
worshipful admiration. It was innocence incarnate pleading for guilt
which she believed like herself, because of the blinding power of her
own light. "She thinks them all like herself," he said to himself.
"She reasons from her knowledge of herself." Then reflecting how
Carroll had undoubtedly sent his son to return his pilfered sweets,
he began to wonder if he could possibly have been mistaken in his
estimate of the man's character, if he had reasoned from wrong
premises, and from that circumstantial evidence which his experience
as a lawyer should have led him to distrust.

Suddenly a shadow flung out across the office floor and a man stood
in the doorway. He was tall and elderly, with a shag of gray beard
and a shining dome of forehead over a nervous, blue-eyed face. He was
the druggist, Andrew Drew, who had his little pharmacy on the
opposite side of the street, a little below Anderson's grocery. He
united with his drug business a local and long-distance telephone and
the Western Union telegraph-office, and he rented and sold
commutation-books of railroad tickets to the City.

"Good-day," he said. Then, before Anderson could respond