urned the girl a little
sharply. "Who chose his mother? Of all men you should be the last to
speak disparagingly of a McKim. Turn the pages of history and you will
find written large in the story of the upbuilding of nations the name
of McKim. Carmody gold is the cabala of Carmody suzerainty. But the
McKim name has been carved deep in the annals of nations by sheer force
of the personalities behind blades of naked steel.

"Even now the crying world-need for men--big men--is as great as in the
days when the fighting McKims deserted their hearthstones to answer the
call of the falchion's clash or the cannon's roar. And some day you
will realize this--when your bank messenger makes good!"

The old man regarded her with a look of admiration.

"You love him!" he said quietly.

The girl started. Her eyes flashed and the play of the firelight gave
an added touch of crimson to her cheeks.

"I do not love him! I--I _hate him!_" Her voice faltered, and the man
saw that she was very near to tears.

"A strange hate, this, Miss Ethel. A strange and a most dangerous hate
for a girl to hold against a man who is a _thief_."

CHAPTER V

"THIEF!"

"A man who is a thief!" The words fell distinctly from Carmody's lips
with the studied quiet of desperation. Ethel stared wild-eyed at the
speaker, and in the frozen silence of the room her tiny fists doubled
until the knuckles whitened.

Noting the effect upon the girl, he continued, speaking more rapidly
now that the dreaded word had been uttered.

"I had no wish to tell you this thing. It is a secret I would gladly
have kept locked within my own breast. But I came here this evening
with a purpose--to save, in spite of herself, if need be, the daughter
of my dead friend from a life of suffering which would inevitably fall
to the lot of any pure-hearted woman who linked her life with that of
an unscrupulous scoundrel, in whom even common decency is dead, if,
indeed, it ever lived."

"He is _not_ a thief! He----" began Ethel vehemently, but the man
interrupted her.

"Wait until you have heard the facts. Last week, on Friday, there was
entrusted to my son's care for delivery a heavy manila envelope
containing fifty thousand dollars' worth of negotiable bonds. It was a
matter of vital importance that these be delivered within a specified
time. Ignoring this fact, he pocketed the bonds, and, in company with a
number of his acquaintances, indulged in a drunken spree which