ces, she would risk her life to save the
child.

I felt a good bit that way; I was firmly embarked on the case now, and I
tortured myself with one idea. Suppose I should find Wardrop guilty, and
I should find extenuating circumstances--what would I do? Publish the
truth, see him hanged or imprisoned, and break Margery's heart? Or keep
back the truth, let her marry him, and try to forget that I had had a
hand in the whole wretched business?

After all, I decided to try to stop my imaginary train. Prove Wardrop
innocent, I reasoned with myself, get to the bottom of this thing, and
then--it would be man and man. A fair field and no favor. I suppose my
proper attitude, romantically taken, was to consider Margery's
engagement ring an indissoluble barrier. But this was not romance; I was
fighting for my life happiness, and as to the ring--well, I am of the
opinion that if a man really loves a woman, and thinks he can make her
happy, he will tell her so if she is strung with engagement rings to the
ends of her fingers. Dangerous doctrine? Well, this is not propaganda.

Tuesday found us all more normal. Mrs. Butler had slept some, and very
commendably allowed herself to be tea'd and toasted in bed. The boys
were started to kindergarten, after ten minutes of frenzied cap-hunting.
Margery went with me along the hall when I started for the office.

"You have not learned anything?" she asked cautiously, glancing back to
Edith, at the telephone calling the grocer frantically for the Monday
morning supply of soap and starch.

"Not much," I evaded. "Nothing definite, anyhow. Margery, you are not
going back to the Monmouth Avenue house again, are you?"

"Not just yet; I don't think I could. I suppose, later, it will have to
be sold, but not at once. I shall go to Aunt Letitia's first."

"Very well," I said. "Then you are going to take a walk with me this
afternoon in the park. I won't take no; you need the exercise, and I
need--to talk to you," I finished lamely.

When she had agreed I went to the office. It was not much after nine,
but, to my surprise, Burton was already there. He had struck up an
acquaintance with Miss Grant, the stenographer, and that usually frigid
person had melted under the warmth of his red hair and his smile. She
was telling him about her sister's baby having the whooping-cough, when
I went in.

"I wish I had studied law," he threw at me. "'What shall it profit a man
to become a lawyer and lose his ow