a prisoner does a
key which is to turn darkness into light, as a hunted man a weapon which
may save his life.

It did not take Jack many minutes we may be sure to hurry from the
station to Ruth's home. There it all happened just as he had planned and
schemed it should--even to the kiss and the hunting for the package of
bonds, and Ruth's cry of joy, and the walk through the starlight night
to Corinne's, and the finding her upstairs; except that the poor woman
was not yet in bed.

"Who gave it to you, Jack?" Corinne asked in a tired voice.

"A friend of Uncle Peter's."

"You mean Mr. Grayson?"

"Yes."

There was no outburst, no cry of gratitude, no flood of long-pent-up
tears. The storm had so crushed and bruised this plant that many days
must elapse before it would again lift its leaves from the mud.

"It was very good of Mr. Grayson, Jack," was all she said in answer, and
then relapsed into the apathy which had been hers since the hour when
the details of her husband's dishonesty had dropped from his lips.

Poor girl! she had no delusions to sustain her. She knew right from
wrong. Emotions never misled her. In her earlier years she and her
mother had been accustomed to look things squarely in the face, and
to work out their own careers; a game of chance, it is true, until her
mother's marriage with the elder Breen; but they had both been honest
careers, and they had owed no man a penny. Garry had fought the battle
for her within the last few years, and in return she had loved him as
much as she was able to love anybody but she had loved him as a man of
honor, not as a thief. Now he had lied to her, had refused to listen to
her pleadings, and the end had come. What was there left, and to whom
should she now turn--she without a penny to her name--except to her
stepfather, who had insulted and despised her. She had even been
compelled to seek help from Ruth and Jack; and now at last to accept it
from Mr. Grayson--he almost a stranger. These were the thoughts which,
like strange nightmares, swept across her tired brain, taking grewsome
shapes, each one more horrible than its predecessor.

At the funeral, next day, she presented the same impassive front. Breen
and her mother rode with her in the carriage to the church, and Jack and
Ruth helped her alight, but she might have been made of stone so far
as she evinced either sorrow or interest in what was taking place about
her. And yet nothing had been omitted by fr