im for her very life, she
listened in despair as he threw a truth at her.

"The only friends you have're out of business! Lafe Grandoken will be
electrocuted for murder----"

The hateful thing he had just said and the insistence in it maddened
her. She covered her face with her hands and uttered a low cry.

"And Theodore King is in the hospital," went on Morse, mercilessly.
"It'll do no good for you to remember him."

She was too normally alive not to express the loving heart outraged
within her.

"I shall love him as long as I live," she shivered between her
fingers.

"Hell of a lot of good it'll do you," grunted the man coarsely.

Keen anxiety empowered her to raise an anguished face.

"You want my money----" she hesitated. "Well, you can have it.... You
want it, don't you?"

Her girlish helplessness made Morse feel that he was without heart or
dignity, but he thought of his little boy and of how this girl was
keeping from him the means to institute a search for the child, and
his desire for vengeance kindled to glowing fires of hate. He
remembered that, steadily of late, he had grown to detest the whole
child-world because of his own sorrow, and nodded acquiescence,
supplementing the nod with a harsh:

"And, by God, I'm going to have it, too!"

"Then let me go back to Lafe's shop. I'll give you every cent I
have.... I won't even ask for a dollar."

It took some time for Morse to digest this idea; then he slowly shook
his head.

"You wouldn't be allowed to give me what would be mine----"

"If I die," breathed Jinnie, shocked. She had read his thought and
blurted it forth.

"Yes, if you die. But I haven't any desire to kill you.... I have
another way."

"What way? Oh, tell me!"

"Not now," drawled Morse. "Later perhaps."

The man contemplated the tips of his boots a minute. Then he looked at
her, the meditative expression still in his eyes.

"To save your friends," he said at length, "you've got to do what I
want you to."

"You mean--to save Lafe?" gasped Jinnie, eagerly.

Morse gave a negative gesture.

"No, not him. The cobbler's got to go. _He knows too much about me._"

Jinnie thought of Lafe, who loved and helped everybody within helping
distance, of his wonderful faith and patience, of the day they had
arrested him, and his last words.

She could not plan for herself nor think of her danger, only of the
cobbler, her friend,----the man who had taken her, a little forlorn
fugitive,