ut there is another. Let me
put it to you: if you had had a son; if he were fatherless; if he had
fallen through emulation of other men, wouldn't you like to know that
some man might lend a hand for the sake of the mother?"

"I don't know. Stealing is stealing, whether my son were the thief or
another man's. Why shouldn't a man take his punishment? You know the
everyday argument: the man who steals a loaf of bread gets nine months,
and the man who steals a hundred thousand gets clear. If the law is for
the one and not for the other, the result is, logically, anarchy.
Besides, the man, not he of the street who steals because he is hungry,
but the one who has every advantage of education and environment to make
his way right in life, goes wrong knowingly. Are we in this case to
coddle, to sympathize, to let ourselves be led into philanthropic drivel
over 'judge not that ye be not judged'? I cannot see it so."

"You are right in your reasoning, but you are reasoning according to the
common law, man-made; and I said we could agree only if we keep to the
fundamentals of life."

"Well, if the law isn't a fundamental, what is?"

"I heard Bishop Brooks once say: 'The Bible _was_ before ever it was
written.' And perhaps I can best answer your question by saying the law
of the human existed before the law of which you are thinking was ever
written. Love, mercy, long-suffering _were_ before the law formulated
'an eye for an eye,' or this world could not have existed to the
present time for you and me. It is in recognition of that, in dealing
with the human, that I make my appeal to you--for the mother, first and
foremost, who suffers through the son, her first-born and only child, as
your daughter is your only--" Mr. Van Ostend interrupted him.

"I must beg you, Father Honore, not to bring my daughter's name into
this affair. I have suffered enough--enough."

"Mr. Van Ostend, pardon me the seeming discourtesy in your own house,
but I am compelled to mention it. After you have given your final
decision to my importuning, there can be no further appeal. The man, if
living, must go to prison. Mrs. Champney positively refuses to help her
nephew in any way. She has been approached twice on the subject of
advancing four-fifths of the hundred thousand; she can do it, but she
won't. She is not a mother; neither has she any real love for her
nephew, for she refuses to aid him in his extremity. I mentioned your
daughter, because you m