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 got into his safe-deposit box as almost to tear the story from the young man's throat.

But now he had the feeling that there was no longer anything at stake worth while. All in him that quickened at the sight of his visitor was a sort of clinical interest in the state of a soul.

As Rollie told his story, the minister gasped with relief to learn that his own plight was due to no Judas-like betrayal, but that the young man was, like himself, a victim of this scheming, devilish woman, and he listened with sympathetic eagerness while the narrator depicted brokenly the frightful conflict between fear and duty through which he had passed during the two days gone.

But with the narrative concluded, the duty of each was still plain. The silence must be kept. Moreover, in this revulsion of feeling from doubt to active sympathy, the minister perceived that things were going very hardly with the young man. Knowing Miss Dounay now rather well, he was able to understand, even without explanation, the paralyzing fear which had kept Rollie dumb for these three days, and to realize that his coming even tardily was a sign of some renascence of moral courage. This perception quickened both the minister's sympathy and his interest in his duty. He was able to interrogate the young man considerately and to put him gradually somewhat at his ease, and this so tactfully as to make it seem to Rollie that, his delay in coming was half a virtue and that the act of coming itself was a supreme moral victory which gave promise of greater victories to come.

But it did not require this exhibition of magnanimity to bring young Burbeck to finish his story with an outpouring of the bitter self-reproaches he had for two days been heaping upon himself.

"I never realized before what a despicable coward sin or crime can make of a man," he concluded. "This spec-