n.

"Lewis," he said, "what is your definition of a crime?"

"It is a violation of the law," replied the lawyer.

"I do not accept your definition," said my father. "It is, rather, I
think, a violation of justice--a violation of something behind the law
that makes an act a crime. I think," he went on, "that God must take a
broader view than Mr. Blackstone and Lord Coke. I have seen a murder
in the law that was, in fact, only a kind of awful accident, and I have
seen your catalogue of crimes gone about by feeble men with no intent
except an adjustment of their rights. Their crimes, Lewis, were merely
errors of their impractical judgment."

Then he seemed to remember that the Englishman was present.

"And now, Mr. Gosford," he said, "will you kindly ask young Marshall to
come in here?"

The man would have refused, with some rejoinder, but my father was
looking at him, and he could not find the courage to resist my father's
will. He got up and went out, and presently returned followed by the lad
and Gaeki. The old country doctor sat down by the door, his leather
case of bottles by the chair, his cloak still fastened under his chin.
Gosford went back to the table and sat down with his writing materials
to keep notes. The boy stood.

My father looked a long time at the lad. His face was grave, but when he
spoke, his voice was gentle.

"My boy," he said, "I have had a good deal of experience in the
examination of the devil's work." He paused and indicated the violated
room. "It is often excellently done. His disciples are extremely clever.
One's ingenuity is often taxed to trace out the evil design in it, and
to stamp it as a false piece set into the natural sequence of events."

He paused again, and his big shoulders blotted out the window.

"Every natural event," he continued, "is intimately connected with
innumerable events that precede and follow. It has so many serrated
points of contact with other events that the human mind is not able to
fit a false event so that no trace of the joinder will appear. The most
skilled workmen in the devil's shop are only able to give their false
piece a blurred joinder."

He stopped and turned to the row of mahogany drawers beside him.

"Now, my boy," he said, "can you tell me why the one who ransacked this
room, in opening and tumbling the contents of all the drawers, about,
did not open the two at the bottom of the row where I stand?"

"Because there was nothing in them