answered the captain. "Mr. Bibby will do all right. I suppose
we had better make the charge burglary, sir?"

"I suppose so," replied Mr. Hepplewhite vaguely.

"Get on, boys," ordered the captain. "Good evening, sir. Good evening,
ma'am. Step lively, you!"

The blue cloud faded away, bearing with it both Bibby and the burglar.
Then the third footman brought the belated tea.

"What a frightful thing to have happen!" grieved Mrs. Witherspoon as she
poured out the tea for Mr. Hepplewhite. "You don't take cream, do you?"

"No, thanks," he answered. "I find too much cream hard to digest. I have
to be rather careful, you know. By the way, you haven't told me where
the burglar was or what he was doing when you went into the room."

"He was in the bed," said Mrs. Witherspoon.

* * * * *

"In the 'Decay of Lying,' Mr. Tutt," said Tutt thoughtfully, as he
dropped in for a moment's chat after lunch, "Oscar Wilde says, 'There is
no essential incongruity between crime and culture.'"

The senior partner removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and carefully
polished the lenses with a bit of chamois, which he produced from his
watch pocket, meanwhile resting the muscles of his forehead by elevating
his eyebrows until he somewhat resembled an inquiring but good-natured
owl.

"That's plain enough," he replied. "The most highly cultivated people
are often the most unscrupulous. I go Oscar one better and declare that
there is a distinct relationship between crime and progress!"

"You don't say, now!" ejaculated Tutt. "How do you make that out?"

Mr. Tutt readjusted his spectacles and slowly selected a stogy from the
bundle in the dusty old cigar box.

"Crime," he announced, "is the violation of the will of the majority as
expressed in the statutes. The law is wholly arbitrary and depends upon
public opinion. Acts which are crimes in one century or country become
virtues in another, and vice versa. Moreover, there is no difference,
except one of degree, between infractions of etiquette and of law, each
of which expresses the feelings and ideas of society at a given moment.
Violations of good taste, manners, morals, illegalities, wrongs,
crimes--they are all fundamentally the same thing, the insistence on
one's own will in defiance of society as a whole. The man who keeps his
hat on in a drawing-room is essentially a criminal because he prefers
his own way of doing things to that adopted by his fellows