emed to Hartley that Fate had dealt very hardly with him. He was
interested in the case of the boy Absalom, and he felt that the
possibility of clearing it up was well within reach, and then he found
himself face to face with an unpleasant and painful duty.

All his gregarious sociable nature cried out against any act that would
cause a scandal in Mangadone, the magnitude of which he could hardly
gauge but only guess at; and yet, wherever he went, the thought haunted
him. His feelings gave him no rest, and he remained inactive and
listless for several days after his ride with Mrs. Wilder. If she had
told him that she implored him personally to drop the case he could not
have felt more certain that she desired him to do so. She worked
indirectly upon his feelings, a much surer way with some natures than a
direct appeal, and the thought brought something akin to misery into the
mind and heart of the police officer.

Absalom had gone, leaving no visible footprint to indicate whither he
had vanished, but the inexorable detail of circumstance after
circumstance led on to a very definite conclusion. The wooden figure
outside the curio dealer's shop pointed up his master's steps, and did
no one any wrong, but the awful fixed finger of changeless fact
indicated the creeper-covered bungalow of the Rev. Francis Heath.

Hartley sat in his room, his elbows on the writing-table, and stared out
before him. A sluicing shower had come up suddenly, obscuring all the
brightness of the day, and the eaves of the veranda dripped mournfully
with a sound like the patter of a thousand tiny feet; the patter sounded
like the falling of tears, and he wondered if Heath, too, listened to
the light persistent noise, and read into it the footsteps of departing
hopes and lost ideals, or merely all the terrible monotonous detail that
preceded an act that was a crime.

Hartley had dealt considerably with criminal cases, but never with
anything the least like the case of the boy Absalom, and the
speculations that came across his mind were new to him. He realized that
a criminal of the class of the Rev. Francis Heath is a criminal who is
driven slowly, inch by inch, into action, and each inch given only at
the cost of blood and tears. It was little short of ghastly to consider
what Heath must have gone through and suffered, and what he still must
suffer, and must continue to suffer as he went along the dark loneliness
of the awful road into which he ha