Arsdale was somewhere about the house and Elaine had gone up-stairs when Donaldson, who had come out-doors to smoke, saw a man with broad shoulders and a round unshaven face step from a cab, push through the hedge gate, and come quickly up the path. He watched him with indifferent interest, until in the dusk he recognized the stubborn mouth which gripped a cigar as a bull-dog hangs to a rag. Then he hurried forward with hand extended.

"Good Lord, Saul," he exclaimed, "where did you drop from?"

"Hello, Don. I rather hoped that I might run across you here."

"I \'m ashamed of myself," answered Donaldson guiltily. "I did n\'t notify you that we had found him. But the last I heard of you, you were out of town."

"Oh, that\'s all right. Tung gave me the whole story."

"The rat! He made a lot of trouble for us."

"And for me, too."

"Still working on the Riverside robberies?"

Saul glanced up quickly. Then looking steadily into Donaldson\'s eyes as though the reply had some significance he answered,

"Yes."

"I wish you luck. And say, old man, I \'ve worried since for fear lest you lost a good opportunity for a hot scent the time I kept you out."

"I did. But I picked it up again by chance."

"You did? Have you caught the man?"

"No," answered Saul abstractedly. "Not yet."

He chewed the stub of his cigar a moment, glancing frequently at the house.

"Say," he asked abruptly, "come down the road here a piece with me, will you?"

Saul led him to the street and far enough away from the cab so that their conversation could not be overheard, yet near enough to the electric light for him to see Donaldson\'s face clearly.

"I want you to tell me something about young Arsdale," he began. "Is he in the house there now?"

"Yes. And happy as a clam at high water."

"Has he talked any since he came back?"

"Talked? He\'s clear-headed enough, if that is what you mean?"

"Has he appeared at all worried—as though he had something on his mind?"

"Not in the slightest He\'s taken such a new grip on himself that the last few days are almost blotted out. You \'d never know him for the same boy, Saul. He\'s quit the dope for good."

"So? Remorse!"

"Not the kind of remorse you mean, Beefy. This is the real thing."

Saul thought a moment. Then he asked,

"You told me, did n\'t you, that he had no money with him that night?"

"Not more than a dollar or so."

"He spent a lot at Tung\'s."

"The heathen probably robbed him of it!"

"Yes, but where did Arsdale get it?"

Donaldson started. There was something ominous in the question. But he could n\'t recount to Saul that disgraceful attack the boy had made upon his sister when returning for funds. It wouldn\'t be fair to the present Arsdale.

"I don\'t know," he answered. "What have you up your sleeve, Beefy?"

"Something bad," replied Saul bluntly. He lowered his voice: "It is beginning to look as though your young friend might know something about the robberies that have been taking place around here."

"What!"

If an earthquake had suddenly shattered the stone house behind the hedge, it would have left him no more dazed.

"I won\'t say that we \'ve got him nailed," Saul hastened to explain, "but it begins to look bad for him."

"But, man dear," gasped Donaldson, "he is n\'t a thug! He isn\'t—"

"If he \'s like the others he \'s anything when he wants his smoke. I \'ve seen more of them than you."

"Saul," he said, "you \'re dead wrong about this! You \'ve made a horrible mistake!"

"Perhaps. But he \'ll have to explain some things."

Donaldson took a grip on himself.

"What\'s the nature of your evidence?"

"There \'s the question of where he got his funds, first; then the fact that all the attacks took place within a small radius of this house; then the motive, and finally the fact, that in a general way he answers to the description given by four witnesses. He \'ll have to take the third degree on that, anyway."

The third degree would undoubtedly kill the boy, or, worse, break his spirit and drive him either to a mad-house or the solace of his drug. It was a cruel thing to confront him with this at such a point in his life. It was fiendish, devilish. It was possible that they might even make the boy believe that in his blind madness he actually did commit these crimes. Then, as in a lurid moving picture, Donaldson recalled the uneasiness of the girl; the morning papers with their glaring headlines of the Riverside robberies, which he had found that morning scattered about the floor; her fear of the police, and the mystery of the untold story at which she had hinted. Take these, and the fact that in his madness Arsdale had actually made an attack upon the girl and upon himself, similar to those outside the house, and the chain was a strong one. The pity of it—coming now!

Yes, it was in this that the cruel injustice lay. Even admitting the boy to be guilty, it was still an injustice. The man who had done those things was outside the pale of the law; he was no more. Arsdale himself, Arsdale the clean-minded young man with a useful life before him, Arsdale with his new soul, had no more to do with those black deeds than he himself had. Yet that lumbering Juggernaut, the Law, could not take this into account. The Law did not deal with souls, but bodies.

To this day—what a hideous climax!

Saul detected the fear in Donaldson\'s eyes,

"You know something about this, Don!" he asked eagerly.

He was no longer a friend; he was scarcely a man; he was a hound who has picked up his trail. His eyes had narrowed; his round face seemed to grow almost pointed. He chewed his cigar end viciously. He was alert in every nerve.

"You\'d better loosen up," he warned, "it\'s all right to protect a friend, but it can\'t be done in a case of this sort. You as a lawyer ought to know that. It can\'t be done."

"Yes, I know, I know. But I want to tell you again that you \'re dead wrong about this. You haven\'t guessed right, Beefy."

"That\'s for others to decide," he returned somewhat sharply. "It \'s up to you to tell what you know."

"It\'s hard to do it—it\'s hard to do it to you."

Donaldson\'s face had suddenly grown blank—impassive. The mouth had hardened and his whole body stiffened almost as it does after death. When he spoke it was without emotion and in the voice of one who has repeated a phrase until it no longer has meaning.

"I realize how you feel," Saul encouraged him, "but there\'s no way out of it."

"No, there\'s no way out of it. So I give myself up!"

"But it is n\'t you I want,—it\'s Arsdale."

"No, I guess it\'s I. See how your descriptions fit me."

Saul pressed closer.

"What the devil do you mean?" he demanded.

"Just this," answered Donaldson dully, "I can\'t see an innocent man go to jail."

To his mind Arsdale was as innocent to-day as though not a shadow of suspicion rested upon him.

"Are you mad?"

"Not yet," answered Donaldson.

Saul waited a moment. In all his professional career he had never received a greater surprise than this. He would not have believed enough of it to react had it not been for Donaldson\'s expression. Back of the impassiveness he read guilt, read it in the restless shifting of the eyes and in the voice dead to hope. Then he said deliberately,

"I don\'t believe you, Don."

"No? Yet you \'ve got as much evidence against me as against Arsdale."

"But, God A\'mighty, Donaldson, why should you do such a thing?"

"Why should the boy?"

Saul seized his arm.

"You don\'t tell me that you\'ve fallen into that habit?"

"Sit............