n't see that birth was anything to rejoice over. Agreed? Now is there
any one who doubts that our tale is true?"

There was a cold crash of stillness in the room; and Moon said, "Pax populi
vox Dei; it is the silence of the people that is the voice of God. Or in
Dr. Pym's more civilized language, it is up to him to open the next charge.
On this we claim an acquittal."

It was about an hour later. Dr. Cyrus Pym had remained for an unprecedented
time with his eyes closed and his thumb and finger in the air.
It almost seemed as if he had been "struck so," as the nurses say;
and in the deathly silence Michael Moon felt forced to relieve
the strain with some remark. For the last half-hour or so the eminent
criminologist had been explaining that science took the same view
of offences against property as it did of offences against life.
"Most murder," he had said, "is a variation of homicidal mania,
and in the same way most theft is a version of kleptomania.
I cannot entertain any doubt that my learned friends opposite
adequately con-ceive how this must involve a scheme of punishment
more tol'rant and humane than the cruel methods of ancient codes.
They will doubtless exhibit consciousness of a chasm so eminently yawning,
so thought-arresting, so--" It was here that he paused and indulged
in the delicate gesture to which allusion has been made; and Michael
could bear it no longer.

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently, "we admit the chasm.
The old cruel codes accuse a man of theft and send him
to prison for ten years. The tolerant and humane ticket
accuses him of nothing and sends him to prison for ever.
We pass the chasm."

It was characteristic of the eminent Pym, in one of his trances
of verbal fastidiousness, that he went on, unconscious not only
of his opponent's interruption, but even of his own pause.

"So stock-improving," continued Dr. Cyrus Pym, "so fraught
with real high hopes of the future. Science therefore
regards thieves, in the abstract, just as it regards murderers.
It regards them not as sinners to be punished for an arbitrary period,
but as patients to be detained and cared for," (his first two digits
closed again as he hesitated)--"in short, for the required period.
But there is something special in the case we investigate here.
Kleptomania commonly con-joins itself--"

"I beg pardon," said Michael; "I did not ask just now because,
to tell the truth, I really thought Dr. Pym, though seemingly ve