d the under-thought dealt
savagely with Nan--with a woman who, for the sake of the loaves and the
fishes, and the shielding of the real offender, would suffer an innocent
man to go to the social gallows for lack of the word which would have
cleared him. He laughed rather bitterly and added, out of the heart of
the under-thought: "I'm glad I'm not naturally inclined to be
pessimistic."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because, after hearing"--he changed his mind suddenly, and transferred
the hard word from Nan to Mr. Vancourt Henniker--"after what I've been
hearing this afternoon I find myself more in the notion of weeping with
the angels than of laughing with the devils."

"What has happened?" she asked, sympathetically alive to his need in one
breath, and keenly apprehensive for her own peace of mind in the next.

"An exceedingly small thing, as the world's measurements go. I was in
town, and made a business call on Mr. Henniker. He's a member of your
church, isn't he?"

"Of St. Michael's in the city," she corrected. "You know I claim
membership here at home in St. John's."

"Well, it's all the same. He is what you would call a Christian man, I
take it?"

"Why not?" she demanded. "What has he done to make you doubt it?"

"Oh, nothing worth mentioning, perhaps. I needed some money to bribe a
lot of political grafters in a Pennsylvania city where I'm trying to
sell a bill of water-pipe. I went to Mr. Henniker to borrow it."

"And, of course, he wouldn't let you have it for any such wretched
purpose!" she flamed out.

"No, you are mistaken; it's just the other way around. I told him what
it was for, hoping rather vaguely, I think, that he'd sit on me and make
the crime impossible. But he didn't."

"You don't mean that he lent you the money after you had told him what
you purposed doing with it?" It was too dark for him to see her face,
but there was something like a breath-catching of horror in her voice.

"I'm sorry it shocks you, but he did. More than that, he took the
trouble to try to explain away my scruples; made it seem quite a
virtuous thing before he got through. You wouldn't believe it now, would
you?"

"But, Tom! you didn't take the money?"

"How could I refuse so good a man? Norman is on his way to Pennsylvania
at this present moment, with a letter of credit in his pocket big enough
to make the mouth of even a professional grafter water. At least, I hope
it is big enough."

She was hurt, shock