ng back from them, telling them
frankly of crimes committed, of his attempted abduction of the girl who
in turn had "abducted him." He had restitutions to make without the
least unnecessary delay. He must square himself and he thanked God
that he could square himself, that his crimes had been bloodless, that
he had but to return the stolen moneys. And, to wipe his slate clean,
he stood ready to pay to the full for what he had done, to offer his
confession openly, to accept without a murmur whatever decree the court
might award him.

Again John Engle did his bit. He went to the county-seat and saw the
district attorney, an upright man, but one who saw clearly. The lawyer
laid his work aside and came immediately with Engle to the King's
Palace.

"Any court, having the full evidence," he said crisply, "would hold you
blameless. Give me the money you have taken; I shall see that it is
returned and that no questions are asked. And if you've got any
idiotic compulsion about open confession . . . Well, think of somebody
besides yourself for a change. Try thinking about the Wonder Girl a
little, it will be good for you."

For he never called her anything but that, the Wonder Girl. When he
had heard everything, he came to her after his straightforward fashion
and gripped her hand until he hurt her.

"I didn't know they made girls like you," he told her before she even
knew who he was.

It was he who, summoning all of his forensic eloquence, finally quieted
Norton's disturbed mind. Norton in his weakened condition was all for
making a clean breast before the world, for acknowledging himself unfit
for his office, for resigning. But in the end when he was told curtly
that he owed vastly more to the county than to his stupid conscience,
that he had been chosen to get Jim Galloway, that that was his job,
that he could do all the resigning he wanted to afterward, and that
finally he was not to consider his own personal feelings until he had
thought of Virginia's, Norton gave over his regrets and merely waxed
impatient for the time when he could finish his work and go back to Las
Flores rancho. For it was understood that he would not go alone.

"I'll free del Rio because I have to, not because I want to," said the
lawyer at the end. "Trusting to you to bring him in again later. He
is one of Galloway's crowd and I know it, despite his big bluffs.
Galloway is away right now, somewhere below the border. Just what he