cupidity leads by the straightest of roads
directly down to hell."

"This you proved six long years ago. Lead me to the child I believe to
be in this house or I will proclaim aloud the pact you entered into
then--a pact to which I was an involuntary witness whose word, however,
will not go for less on that account. Behind the curtain still hanging
over that old closet I stood while--"

His hand had seized my arm with a grip few could have proceeded under.

"Do you mean--"

The rest was whispered in my ear.

I nodded and felt that he was mine now. But the laugh which the next
minute broke from his lips dashed my assurance.

"Oh, the ways of the world!" he cried. Then in a different tone and not
without reverence: "Oh, the ways of God!"

I made no reply. For every reason I felt that the next word must come
from him.

It was an unexpected one.

"That was Doctor Pool unregenerate and more heedful of the things of
this world than of those of the world to come. You have to deal with
quite a different man now. It is of that very sin I am now repenting in
sackcloth and ashes. I live but to expiate it. Something has been done
toward accomplishing this, but not enough. I have been played upon,
used. This I will avenge. New sin is a poor apology for an old one."

I scarcely heeded him. I was again straining my ears to catch a
smothered sob or a frightened moan.

"What are you listening for?" he asked.

"For the sound of little Gwendolen's voice. It is worth fifty thousand
dollars, you remember. Why shouldn't I listen for it? Besides, I have a
real and uncontrollable sympathy for the child. I am determined to
restore her to her home. Your blasphemous babble of a changed heart does
not affect me. You are after a larger haul than the sum offered by Mr.
Ocumpaugh. You want some of Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fortune. I have suspected
it from the first."

"I want? Little you know what I want"--then quickly, convincingly: "You
are strangely deceived. Little Miss Ocumpaugh is not here."

"What is that I hear, then?" was the quick retort with which I hailed
the sigh, unmistakably from infantile lips, which now rose from some
place very much nearer us than the hollow regions overhead toward which
my ears had been so long turned.

"That!" He flashed with uncontrollable passion, and if I am not mistaken
clenched his hands so violently as to bury his nails in his flesh.
"Would you like to see what that is? Come!"--and taking up the la