were closing around her. For himself, in the days to come, there
would be a ghastly dread, but there would never be regret over the
cost of saving her. Perhaps, some other he might have let suffer in his
stead--not her! Even, had he been innocent, and she guilty of the crime,
he would still have taken the burden of it on his own shoulders. He had
saved her from the waters--he would save her until the end, as far
as the power in him might lie. It was thus that, with the primitive
directness of his reverential love for the girl, he counted no sacrifice
too great in her behalf. Joe Garson was not a good man, at the world
esteems goodness. On the contrary, he was distinctly an evil one,
a menace to the society on which he preyed constantly. But his good
qualities, if few, were of the strongest fiber, rooted in the deeps of
him. He loathed treachery. His one guiltiness in this respect had been,
curiously enough, toward Mary herself, in the scheme of the burglary,
which she had forbidden. But, in the last analysis, here his deceit
had been designed to bring affluence to her. It was his abhorrence
of treachery among pals that had driven him to the murder of the
stool-pigeon in a fit of ungovernable passion. He might have stayed his
hand then, but for the gusty rage that swept him on to the crime. None
the less, had he spared the man, his hatred of the betrayer would have
been the same.... And the other virtue of Joe Garson was the complement
of this--his own loyalty, a loyalty that made him forget self utterly
where he loved. The one woman who had ever filled his heart was Mary,
and for her his life were not too much to give.

The suddenness of it all held Mary voiceless for long seconds. She was
frozen with horror of the event.

When, at last, words came, they were a frantic prayer of protest.

"No, Joe! No! Don't talk--don't talk!"

Burke, immensely gratified, went nimbly to his chair, and thence
surveyed the agitated group with grisly pleasure.

"Joe has talked," he said, significantly.

Mary, shaken as she was by the fact of Garson's confession, nevertheless
retained her presence of mind sufficiently to resist with all her
strength.

"He did it to protect me," she stated, earnestly.

The Inspector disdained such futile argument. As the doorman appeared in
answer to the buzzer, he directed that the stenographer be summoned at
once.

"We'll have the confession in due form," he remarked, gazing pleasedly
on the th