the hazards
confronting him at every turn, he will find the real criminal in him
growing and possessing him, making him think things and do things of the
utter depravity of which he has never had any doubt."

While she was speaking Griswold could feel the change she was describing
stealing over him like a nightmare, and when she stopped he passed his
hand over his eyes as one awaking from a vaguely terrifying dream.

"You mean that there is a real criminal in every man?" he questioned,
and the question seemed to say itself of its own volition.

"In every man and in every woman: how can you be a writer and not know
that? Ask yourself. You admit the existence of the good and the bad, and
ordinarily you choose the good and shudder at the bad: tell me--haven't
there been times when the most horrible crimes were possible to
you?--times when, with the littlest tipping of the balance, you could
have killed somebody? You needn't answer: I know you have looked over
that brink, because I have looked over it myself, more than once. And,
sooner or later, _Fleming_ will find himself looking over it--with all
the horrors of the penalties pushing and shoving at him to tumble him
into the gulf."

Griswold did not reply. He was gathering up the scattered pages of his
manuscript and replacing them in order. When he spoke again it was of a
matter entirely irrelevant.

"I had an odd experience the other evening," he said. "I had been dining
with the Raymers and was walking back to Shawnee Street. A little
newsboy named Johnnie Fergus turned up from somewhere at one of the
street crossings and tried to sell me a paper--at eleven o'clock at
night! I bought one and joked him about being out so late; and from that
on I couldn't get rid of him. He went all the way home with me, talking
a blue streak and acting as if he were afraid of something or somebody.
I remembered afterward that he is the boy who takes care of your boat.
Is there anything wrong with him?"

Miss Grierson had left her chair and had gone to stand at one of the
windows.

"Nothing that I know of," she said. "He is a bright boy--too bright for
his own good, I'm afraid. But I can explain--a little. Johnnie has taken
a violent fancy to you for some reason, and he has fallen into the
boyish habit of weaving all sorts of romances around you. I think he
reads too many exciting stories and tries to make you the hero of them.
He told me the other day that he was sure somebody