"

"Yes, for Dennie's sake--" Bond looked imploringly at Burgess.

"Yes, yes, I'll do my duty as I promised. But why not do it yourself
toward her? Why not be a man and a father?"

"Me! A criminal! Do you know what that kind of slavery is?" Saxon
whispered.

"Almost," Burgess answered, but the old man did not catch his meaning.

Dennie was waiting in the parlor, a cosy little room but without the
luxurious appointments of Norrie Wream's home. Yet tonight Dennie seemed
beautiful to Burgess, and this quiet little room, a haven of safety.

"Dennie," he said, plunging into his purpose at once. "I come to you
because I need a friend and you are tempered steel."

Tonight Dennie's gray eyes were dark and shining. The rippling waves of
yellow brown hair gave a sort of Madonna outline to her face, and there
was about her something indefinably pleasant.

"What can I do for you, Professor Burgess?" she asked.

"Listen to me, Dennie, and then advise me."

Was this the acting-dean of Sunrise, a second Fenneben, already
declared? His face was full of pathos, yet even in his feverish grief
it seemed a better face to Dennie than the cold scholarly countenance of
two years ago.

"My troubles go back a long way. My father was given to greed. He sold
himself and my sister's happiness and mine for money. You think your
father is a slave, Dennie, because he has a craving for whisky. Less
than half a dozen times a year the demon inside gets him down."

Dennie looked up with a sorrowful face.

"Yes, but think of what he might do. You don't know what dreadful things
he has done--"

"Yes, I do. He told me himself the very worst. I'll never betray him,
Dennie. His punishment is heavy enough."

Burgess laid his hand on her dimpled hand in token of sincerity.

"But that's only rarely, little girl. My father every day in the year
gave himself to an appetite for money till he cared for nothing else.
My sister, who died believing that I also had turned against her, was
forced to marry a man she did not love because he had money. I never
knew the man she did love. It was a romance of her girlhood. I was away
from home the most of my boyhood years, and she never mentioned his name
after the affair was broken off. All I know is that she was deceived and
made to believe some cruel story against him. She and her husband came
West, where they died. My father never forgave them for going West, nor
permitted me to speak her name to him. I