Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/158

 or subterfuge and meant the unearthing of a secret that might ruin a woman's good name for a mistake made forty years before. It seemed to him a strange twist of conscience, which revolted at the arrest of a man for a crime of which circumstances tended to show him guilty, while it gave willing assent to bringing to light that which might have been lived down years before and redeemed by a clean life during more years than any of these men had lived.

As soon, however, as he took up the matter, the spirit of the quest possessed him, and this grew strong as the facts unearthed began to point in a certain direction, while wonder and a low greed found seeds in the case as it unfolded. At last, with the truth before him, he was at the point where paths separated, with insistent necessity for him to take one or the other. Should he go to the woman and demand his price for silence; or should he give the sons the facts and make them the purchasers? Whichever he decided on, he would deal honestly as a man should, and he would not pit one against the other. Hence, the importance of the decision,