Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/396

 fresh linen and a business suit, turned on the water in the bath, arranged for the presence of a barber in his room in fifteen minutes, and the service of a hearty dinner in the same place in thirty.

The refreshment of invigorating sleep, plus the spectacle of John Hampstead, that Atlas of a man, standing rock-like beneath the world of another's burden, had inspired Rollie sufficiently to enable him to resume once more the pose of his presumed position in life. To be sure, he was still under the spell of his fear,—and could not see himself as yet doing one thing to weaken the pressure upon his benefactor.

For this dastardly inactivity he suffered a flood of self-reproaches, but stemmed them with reflections upon the irreproachable character of the minister, and his impregnable position in the community. He reflected how futile and puerile all the endeavors of the newspapers to involve this good man in scandal must prove. How ridiculous the idea that he could be a common thief! How suddenly the wide, sane public, after a day or two's debauch of excitement, would turn and bestow again their unwavering confidence upon this man and laurel his brow with fresh and more permanent expressions of their regard for his high character. Reflections like this, winged by his own inside knowledge of the true greatness of the victim, together with the soothing influence of a bath, the ministrations of a skilled barber, and the sedative effects of a good dinner, sent young Burbeck to his home somewhere about ten o'clock in the evening, to all appearances quite his usual, happy-looking self.

The telephone had apprised his mother of his coming, and she had remained up to meet him.

"Oh, my son!" she murmured happily, as he laid his smooth cheek against hers and mingled his wavy brown hair with the silvering threads of her own dark tresses.