hers,
hidden from all other men by one unhappy man, in his miserly
aberration. The price of fifteen years of agony and shame. Now,
fifteen years to be forgotten, and honor restored.

In that far past Philip Romeyn's story had been simple and it had been
true. He had been unaccountably anxious and had risen in the night and
gone to the bank. He believed that the safe had not been locked,
though he had been assured it should be by Mr. Wadislaw, the only
other person who had a key to it. To his surprise he had found the
banker in his office, but in dire mishap. He was lying on the floor,
unconscious, bleeding from a wound upon his temple. The safe was open,
empty. The steel bar which, at night, was padlocked upon it for extra
security lay on the floor, beside the senseless man. Mr. Romeyn had
picked this up and was standing with it in his hand, horrified and
half-stupefied by the shocking affair, when the watchman, discovering
light and noise, had entered and found them. It was his hasty,
accusing voice which started the cry of robbery and murder; and the
circumstances had seemed so aggravated, the circumstantial evidence so
strong, that the judge had imposed the heaviest penalty within his
power. The hypothesis that Mr. Wadislaw had himself put the contents
of the safe away, had even perverted them to his own use; and that he
had injured himself by falling against the sharp corner of the safe's
heavy and open door, had been set aside as too trivial for
consideration.

The hypothesis had been correct, the circumstantial evidence
incorrect; yet in the name of justice, the latter had prevailed.

"Count them! have you counted them, Adrian?"

"Yes, Margot. It is all here. The very sum of which I have so often
heard. Thank God, that it is found!"

"My father! Come, Joe, we're going to my father."

"And I go with you. In my father's name and to begin his lifelong
reparation."

CHAPTER XXV

THE MELODY AND MYSTERY OF LIFE

Swift the way and joyous now, that same road over which Adrian had
journeyed on the day before, so grudgingly. Yet not half swift enough
that through express by which they left the city limits for the little
town of Sing Sing, or as would have better suited Indian Joe, of
Ossining. Scene of so many tragedies and broken hearts; to be, to-day,
a scene of unutterable gladness.

Margot's eyes were on the flying landscape, counting the lessening
landmarks as one counts off the stitches of a tedi