he third of your gains for it. You are
going to make good your promise to Lettie Conlow, and you will do it
now. You will give her your name, the title of wife. Your property under
the Kansas law becomes hers also; her children become the heirs to your
estate. These, with an honest life following, are the only conditions
that can save you from the penitentiary, as an embezzler, a receiver of
stolen goods, a robber of county records, a defamer of innocent men, an
accomplice in helping an Indian to steal a white girl, and a libertine.

"I shall not release the evidence, nor withdraw the power to bring you
down the minute you break over the restrictions. Amos Judson," (there
was a terrible sternness in my father's voice, as he stood before the
wretched little man), "there is an assize at which you will be tried,
there is a bar whose Judge knows the heart as well as the deed, and for
both you must answer to Him, not only for the things in which I give you
now the chance to redeem yourself, but for those crimes for which the
law may not now punish you. There is here one door open beside the one
of iron bars, and that is the door to an honest life. Redeem your past
by the future."

For the person who could have seen John Baronet that day, who could have
heard his deep strong voice and felt the power of his magnetic
personality, who could have been lifted up by the very strength of his
nobility so as to realize what a manhood such as his can mean--for one
who could have known all this it were easy to see to how hard a task I
have set my pen in trying to picture it here.

"No man's life is an utter failure until he votes it so himself." My
father did not relax his hold for a moment. "You must square yours by a
truer line and lift up to your own plane the girl you have promised to
marry, and prosperity and happiness such as you could never know
otherwise will come to you. On this condition only will you escape the
full penalty of the law."

The little widower stood up at last. It had been a terrible grilling,
but his mind and body, cramped together, seemed now to expand.

"I'll do it, Judge Baronet. Will you help me?"

He put out his hand hesitatingly.

My father took it in his own strong right hand. No man or woman, whether
clothed upon with virtue or steeped in vice, ever reached forth a hand
to John Baronet and saw in his face any shadow of hesitancy to receive
it. So supreme to him was the ultimate value of each human