k but for one person,
her brother. Yes, Mortimer was a hero! The horse, lazily going, jumped
a little in the traces; she had struck him a harder tap with the whip.
Allis continued her mental summing up. Why did Mortimer go to Gravesend?
It must have been to see Alan--the boy was there. If he had discovered
that the money was missing, and thought Alan had taken it, he would
do this; if he had suspected some other person he would have made the
matter known to the cashier. He did not replace the money at once,
because he hadn't it. She knew that Mortimer was poor. He had failed to
find Alan until after Lauzanne's victory; her brother had told her this
much, and that Mortimer had won a lot of money over the horse. Why he
had bet on Lauzanne she knew not; perhaps Providence had guided, had
helped him that much. But surely that was the money, his winnings, with
which he had replaced the thousand dollars.

The girl's mind had worked methodically, following sequence of action
to sequence, until finally the conviction that Mortimer had sought to
shield her brother, and chance or Providence working through herself
and Lauzanne had placed in his hands the necessary funds, came to her as
fixedly as though the whole past panorama of events lay pictured before
her eyes.

She saw all this mentally; but would it avail anything in actuality? If
the boy disclaimed guilt, as he had; if Mortimer limited his defense to
a simple denial, refusing to implicate her brother, what could she do
except give her moral support? To her it seemed such a small reward for
his heroism; her faith would not save him from the brand of felony, and
to follow out her convictions publicly she must denounce her brother,
cast upon him the odium of theft. Truly her position was one of extreme
hopelessness. Two men she loved stood before her mentally, one accused
of others as a thief, and one--her own brother--charged by her reason
with the crime.

Under the continued silence Crane grew restless; the girl, almost
oblivious of his presence, deep in the intricacies of the crime, gave no
sign of a desire to pursue the discussion.

"Of course I am anxious to clear the young man if he is innocent,"
hazarded the banker, to draw her gently back into the influence that he
felt must be of profit to himself. This assertion of Crane's was only
assimilatively truthful. As president of the bank, naturally he should
wish to punish none other than the guilty man; as a rival to