at did he want with you, Basil?"

"Well, he wanted to know where his daughter was."

"You didn't tell him!"

"I didn't know. Then he wanted me to go to Mrs. Hasketh and find out."

"You didn't say you would?"

"I said most decidedly I wouldn't," I returned, and I recalled my
severity to Tedham in refusing his prayer with more satisfaction than it
had given me at the time. "I told him that I had no business to
interfere, and that I was not sure it would be right even for me to
meddle with the course things had taken." I was aware of weakening my
case as I went on; I had better left her with a dramatic conception of a
downright and relentless refusal.

"I don't see why you felt called upon to make excuses to him, Basil. His
impudence in coming to you, of all men, is perfectly intolerable. I
suppose it was that sentimental letter you wrote him."

"You didn't think it sentimental at the time, my dear. You approved of
it."

"I didn't approve of it, Basil; but if you felt so strongly that you
ought to do it, I felt that I ought to let you. I have never interfered
with your sense of duty, and I never will. But I am glad that you didn't
feel it your duty to that wretch to go and make more trouble on his
account. He has made quite enough already; and it wasn't his fault that
you were not tried and convicted in his place."

"There wasn't the slightest danger of that--"

"He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring the disgrace on your
wife and children."

"Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long ago. And I don't
think--I never thought--that Tedham would have let the suspicion rest on
me. He merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investigation began,
so as to gain time to get out to Canada."

My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw tender affection
dangerously near contempt. "You are a very forgiving man, Basil," she
said, and I looked down sheepishly. "Well, at any rate, you have had the
sense not to mix yourself up in his business. Did he pretend that he
came straight to you, as soon as he got out? I suppose he wanted you to
believe that he appealed to you before he tried anybody else."

"Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask for my address, and
after he had visited the cemetery he came on out here. And, if you must
know, I think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Put him behind a good
horse, with a pocketful of some one else's money, in a handsome suit of
clothes, and a ga