h, but my dear fellow!" Whitley protested. "In that case they would
hardly take a course which was calculated to drive you to desperation!"

"You don't understand it all," I rejoined. "Everything has been done
secretly, and it is only by the merest chance that I have now learned
the truth. This man you have been talking to has been following me, or
keeping track of me, ever since I left the penitentiary. I have seen
him twice, and I took him to be a traveling salesman--as he doubtless
intended I should. You can see how it was designed to work out. With
a sufficient amount of discouragement it was reasonable to assume that
the prison bird would finally yield to the inevitable; become a
criminal in fact and get himself locked up again out of harm's way."

"You think that was the motive?"

"I am as certain of it as I should be if I could read the minds of
those two old plotters in my home town. You see, I've summered and
wintered them. The only thing I can't understand is why I have been so
blind; why I didn't assume all this long ago and act accordingly."

"But why, _why_ should they be so utterly lost to every sense of right
and justice; to all the promptings of common humanity? It's hideously
incredible!"

"I have given you two reasons, and you may take your choice. It is
either the fear of death--the fear of the vengeance of a man whose life
they have ruined, or else the transaction in which they involved me,
and in which they made me their scapegoat, was more far-reaching than
I, or anybody in Glendale, supposed it was."

Whitley sat for a full minute staring absently into the fire. Then he
said, very gently: "Now that you know the truth, what will you do?"

"I know well enough what I ought to do. We may pass over the fellow at
the Hamilton House; he is only a poor tool in the hands of the master
workmen. I bear him no malice of the blood-letting sort. But really,
Whitley, I ought to go back to Glendale and rid the earth of those two
old villains who have earned their blotting-out."

Again there was a pause, and then: "Well, why don't you do it?"

I laughed rather bitterly.

"Because all the fight has been taken out of me, Whitley. That is the
reason and the only reason."

His smile was beatific. "No, it isn't," he denied. "You know you
couldn't do it; you couldn't bring yourself to do it. Maybe, in the
heat of passion . . . but to go deliberately: no, Weyburn; if you think
you could do s