Was she sick? Did my letters reach her?
Were her letters and mine intercepted? Were detectives on my trail?
Could it be that the Laniers were being pursued for those murders? Had
they decided to throw me off?

"A thousand fears haunted me. I was in constant dread of being
identified, yet looked daily for a letter from Mary. Sometimes I would
fully decide to start for Calcutta, regardless of consequences, but
abandoned the plan. I took sick. Becoming very weak, a physician was
consulted. After a few visits, he directed that I be removed to the
hospital. Here I have been for weeks, without hearing from my wife or
family. What can I do to hear of them? Oh, can't you do something in my
behalf? Help me to hear from Mary and the children!"

Sir Donald asked many questions about the deaths of Oswald and Alice,
but elicited little further information. He was convinced that nothing
had been concealed. There was no positive proof of their deaths. How
could this missing link be procured?

Both Sir Donald and Esther were much interested in the family of William
Dodge. That this husband and father had been led into crime through
poverty was apparent. His love for hungry wife and children placed him
at the mercy of this archvillain, who, with his murderous son, had
caused so much suffering.

Sir Donald well knew that to keep inviolate his agreement with William
Dodge would be a technical concealment of crime. Yet he would have
accepted any fate rather than betray such trust.

Strict compliance with penal statutes may require much individual
meanness.

William Dodge was most unhappy. Each movement made seemed to further
involve him in hopeless entanglement. The mistake which resulted in his
wildly aimed cartridge missing its intended victim saved him from guilt
of homicide.

But how judge of any event by its immediate circle? Only that far cycle
whose ever-widening circuit merges eternal radii can fully compass the
puissance of human action.

Under stress of immediate death he had fully confessed all. Now even the
one dubious remnant of personal honor, according to crime's unwritten
code, is swept away.

How could the wretch, about to escape all human reckoning, making
cowardly confession of crime involving fellow-guilt, hope that his
confidences would remain inviolate? One of the penalties of faithless
duplicity is that all trust in fellow-fealty dies.

William Dodge now feared that those who so kindly watched over his