llars Mortimer
has been accused of taking."

Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the
jaw of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak,
watery, blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he
essayed to speak--to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his
tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled
like the cloth limb of a dummy.

Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden
accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel
his suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil
fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right was
on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in the
toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he
allowed Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited
for his victim to speak.

At last Cass found strength to say: "Mr. Crane, this is a terrible
accusation; there is some dreadful mistake--I did not--"

The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly
hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he
might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly,
holding the guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.

"You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your
brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The
Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter
had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater
crime than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him
to be accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless
to deny it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter
carefully, and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not,
you will be sent to the penitentiary."

Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair,
steadying himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as
though he were drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser,
and spoke in a voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: "My
God! Mr. Crane! Do you mean it, that you won't prosecute me? Did you say
that?"

"Not if you confess."

"Thank God--thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad;