er be opened with a lie,
Mr. Cleek. They might be opened by the very thing of which you
speak--confession. I think I should take my chances upon that. At any
rate, if I failed, I should at least have preserved my self-respect and
done more to merit what I wanted than if I had secured it by treachery.
Think of the boy you helped a little while ago. How much respect will
you have for him if he never lives up to his promise; never goes to
Clarges Street at all? Yet if he does live up to it, will he not be
doubly worth the saving? But please!" with a sudden change from
seriousness to gaiety, "if I am to be led into sermonizing, might I not
know what it is all about? I shall be right, shall I not, in supposing
that all this is merely the preface to something else?"

"Either the Preface or--the Finis," said Cleek, with a deeply drawn
breath. "Still, as you say, no atonement is worth calling an atonement
if it is based upon fraud; and so--Miss Lorne, I am going to ask you to
indulge in yet another little flight of fancy. Carry your mind back,
will you, to the night when your cousin--to the night two years ago when
Sir Horace Wyvern's daughter had her wedding presents stolen and you, I
believe, had rather a trying moment with that fellow who was known as
'The Vanishing Cracksman.' You can remember it, can you not?"

"Remember it? I shall never forget it. I thought, when the police ran
down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I
think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that it was he."

"And you found it out only through his telling you, did you not?
Afterward, I am told, the police found you lying fainting at the foot of
the stairs. The man had touched you, spoken to you, even caught up your
hand and put it to his lips? Can you remember what he said when he did
that? Can you?"

"Yes," she answered, with a little shudder of recollection. "For weeks
afterward I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of it
and going cold all over. He said, 'You have come down into Hell and
lifted me out. Under God, you shall lift me into Heaven as well!'"

"And perhaps you shall," said Cleek, stopping short and uncovering his
head. "At any rate, I'll not attempt to win it by fraud. Miss Lorne, I
am that man. I am the 'Vanishing Cracksman' of those other days. I've
walked the 'straight path' since the moment I kissed your hand."

She said nothing, made no faintest sound. She couldn't--all the