the human family, of course; and if
those people had had any penetration they would have known it. I can't
go around furnishing brains to the police; it is not to be expected.'

'How did you feel after that performance?'

'Well, of course I was distressed to find that the police had
misunderstood me, but as long as I had not told any lie I knew there was
no occasion to sit up nights and worry about it.'

My friend struggled with the case several minutes, turning it over and
examining it in his mind, then he said that so far as he could see the
modification was itself a lie, it being a misleading reservation of an
explanatory fact, and so I had told two lies instead of only one.

'I wouldn't have done it,' said he; 'I have never told a lie, and I
should be very sorry to do such a thing.'

Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a basketful of surprised and
delighted smiles down at a gentleman who was passing in a hansom.

'Who was that, G---?'

'I don't know.'

'Then why did you do that?'

'Because I saw he thought he knew me and was expecting it of me. If I
hadn't done it he would have been hurt. I didn't want to embarrass him
before the whole street.'

'Well, your heart was right, G---, and your act was right. What you did
was kindly and courteous and beautiful; I would have done it myself; but
it was a lie.'

'A lie? I didn't say a word. How do you make it out?'

'I know you didn't speak, still you said to him very plainly and
enthusiastically in dumb show, "Hello! you in town? Awful glad to see
you, old fellow; when did you get back?" Concealed in your actions
was what you have called "a misleading reservation of an explanatory
fact"--the act that you had never seen him before. You expressed joy in
encountering him--a lie; and you made that reservation--another lie. It
was my pair over again. But don't be troubled--we all do it.'

Two hours later, at dinner, when quite other matters were being
discussed, he told how he happened along once just in the nick of time
to do a great service for a family who were old friends of his. The head
of it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously
disgraceful character. If know the facts would break the hearts of the
innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame. There was
no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it.

'The family never found out, G---?'

'Never. In all these years they have never suspec