morning, early."

He seemed reassured and held out his hand:

"Good-night, dearest--you're a brave girl. You made a splendid
fight."

"It didn't do much good," she replied in a disheartened, listless
way.

"But it set him thinking," rejoined Jefferson. "No one ever spoke
to my father like that before. It did him good. He's still
marching up and down the library, chewing the cud--"

Noticing Shirley's tired face and her eyes, with great black
circles underneath, he stopped short.

"Now don't do any more packing to-night," he said. "Go to bed and
in the morning I'll come up and help you. Good night!"

"Good night, Jeff," she smiled.

He went downstairs, and after doing some more packing she went to
bed. But it was hours before she got to sleep, and then she
dreamed that she was in the Senate Chamber and that she saw Ryder
suddenly rise and denounce himself before the astonished senators
as a perjurer and traitor to his country, while she returned to
Massapequa with the glad news that her father was acquitted.

Meantime, a solitary figure remained in the library, pacing to and
fro like a lost soul in Purgatory. Mrs. Ryder had returned from
the play and gone to bed, serenely oblivious of the drama in real
life that had been enacted at home, the servants locked the house
up for the night and still John Burkett Ryder walked the floor of
his sanctum, and late into the small hours of the morning the
watchman going his lonely rounds, saw a light in the library and
the restless figure of his employer sharply silhouetted against
the white blinds.

For the first time in his life John Ryder realized that there was
something in the world beyond Self. He had seen with his own eyes
the sacrifice a daughter will make for the father she loves, and
he asked himself what manner of a man that father could be to
inspire such devotion in his child. He probed into his own heart
and conscience and reviewed his past career. He had been
phenomenally successful, but he had not been happy. He had more
money than he knew what to do with, but the pleasures of the
domestic circle, which he saw other men enjoy, had been denied to
him. Was he himself to blame? Had his insensate craving for gold
and power led him to neglect those other things in life which
contribute more truly to man's happiness? In other words, was his
life a mistake? Yes, it was true what this girl charged, he had
been merciless and unscrupulous in his dealings with hi