t up from his cell.

"It's a bad business, sir," Burke said, with hearty sympathy, to the
shaken father, after the formal greetings that followed the entrance of
the two men. "It's a very bad business."

"What does he say?" Gilder questioned. There was something pitiful
in the distress of this man, usually so strong and so certain of his
course. Now, he was hesitant in his movements, and his mellow voice came
more weakly than its wont. There was a pathetic pleading in the dulled
eyes with which he regarded the Inspector.

"Nothing!" Burke answered. "That's why I sent for you. I suppose Mr.
Demarest has made the situation plain to you."

Gilder nodded, his face miserable.

"Yes," he has explained it to me, he said in a lifeless voice. "It's
a terrible position for my boy. But you'll release him at once, won't
you?" Though he strove to put confidence into his words, his painful
doubt was manifest.

"I can't," Burke replied, reluctantly, but bluntly. "You ought not to
expect it, Mr. Gilder."

"But," came the protest, delivered with much more spirit, "you know very
well that he didn't do it!"

Burke shook his head emphatically in denial of the allegation.

"I don't know anything about it--yet," he contradicted.

The face of the magnate went white with fear.

"Inspector," he cried brokenly, "you--don't mean--"

Burke answered with entire candor.

"I mean, Mr. Gilder, that you've got to make him talk. That's what I
want you to do, for all our sakes. Will you?"

"I'll do my best," the unhappy man replied, forlornly.

A minute later, Dick, in charge of an officer, was brought into the
room. He was pale, a little disheveled from his hours in a cell. He
still wore his evening clothes of the night before. His face showed
clearly the deepened lines, graven by the suffering to which he had been
subjected, but there was no weakness in his expression. Instead, a new
force that love and sorrow had brought out in his character was plainly
visible. The strength of his nature was springing to full life under the
stimulus of the ordeal through which he was passing.

The father went forward quickly, and caught Dick's hands in a mighty
grip.

"My boy!" he murmured, huskily. Then, he made a great effort, and
controlled his emotion to some extent. "The Inspector tells me," he went
on, "that you've refused to talk--to answer his questions."

Dick, too, winced under the pain of this meeting with his father in
a situation s