ht have been;
you see what I was trying to be--a common thief, a betrayer of a sacred
trust."

"Don't talk like that, father," began Billy, shaken by his father's
humility. "I guess we're in the same hole, only I'm in deeper. I tried to
rob _you_. I tried to steal some of that Tyringham money myself,
but--but----"

Hood, wishing to leave the two alone for their further confidences,
walked to the recumbent Fogarty, roused him with a dig in the ribs, and
conferred with him in low tones.

"You took the stuff from my box, Billy?" Mr. Deering asked.

Billy waited apprehensively for what might follow. It was possible that
his father had already robbed the Tyringham estate; the thought chilled
him into dejection.

"I _had_ stolen it. My God, I couldn't help it!" Deering groaned. "I left
that waste paper in the box to fool myself, and put the real stuff in
another place. I hoped--yes, that was it, I hoped--I'd never find
Tyringham and I could keep those bonds. But all the time I kept looking
for him. You see, Billy, I couldn't be as bad as I wanted to be; and
yet----"

He drew his hand across his face as though to shut out the picture he saw
of himself as a felon.

"Oh, you wouldn't have done it; you couldn't have done it!" cried Billy,
anxious to mitigate his father's misery. "If you hadn't hidden the real
bonds, I'd have been a thief! Ned Ranscomb was trying to corner Mizpah
and needed my help. I put in all I had--that two hundred thousand you
gave me my last birthday, and then he skipped. When I get hold of
_him_----!"

"You put two hundred thousand in Mizpah?"

"I did, like a fool, and, of course, it's lost! Ned went daffy about a
girl and dropped Mizpah--and my money!"

Mr. Deering was once more a business man. "What did Ranscomb buy at?" he
asked curtly.

"Seven and a quarter."

"Then you needn't kick Ned! The Ranscombs put through their deal and
Mizpah's gone to forty!"

Hood rejoined them, and they talked till daylight. He told them much of
himself. The responsibility of a great fortune had not appealed to him;
he had been honest in his preference for the vagabond life, but realized,
now that he was well launched upon middle age, that it was only becoming
and decent for him to alter his ways. Billy's liking for him, that had
struggled so rebelliously against impatience and distrust, warmed to the
heartiest admiration.

"Of course I knew you were married," the senior Deering remarked for
Billy's enli