HELD TO ANSWER (continued 8)

"No, nothing to say—yet."

Always the "yet" was added. "Yet" meant the minister's hope for deliverance. The reporters who had heard that "yet" so many times in the three days began to find in it something pathetic and almost convincing. But though the minister had added it this last time from sheer force of habit, the hope had just departed from him. With his love-hope gone, there was nothing personally for which John Hampstead cared to ask the future. Time, for him, was at an end. He was not a being. He was an instrument.

But as if to remind him for what purpose he was an instrument, he had barely hung up the 'phone when there was a faint tap at the outer entrance of his study, followed at his word of invitation by the figure of a man who, with a furtive, backward glance as if afraid of the shadows beneath the palm trees, slipped quickly through the narrowest possible opening, closed the door and halted uncertainly, his eyes blinking at the light, his hands rubbing nervously one upon the other. The man was carefully dressed and tonsured. There was every evidence that to the world he was trying to be his old debonair self, but before the minister he stood abject and pitiable.

"Rollie!" exclaimed Doctor Hampstead, leaping up.

"She haunted me!" the conscience-stricken man faltered helplessly, sinking into a chair. "She threatened to denounce me right there in the bank, if I dared to communicate with you." Again there was that frightened look backward to the door.

An hour before, when the minister had not yet reasoned out the effect upon Bessie of this awful story of his alleged relations with the actress, he would have leaped upon Rollie vehemently, so anxious to know how the diamonds 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 spectacle of you bearing uncomplainingly upon your back the burden of my guilt before this whole community sets something burning in me like a fire. It has given me courage to come here. Sometimes in the last few hours I have almost had the courage to come out and tell the truth, to denounce this devilish woman for what she is, and to take my guilt upon myself."

For a moment Rollie's eyes opened till a ring of white appeared about the iris, and he shifted his position dizzily.

"But," exclaimed the minister with sudden apprehension and an outburst of great earnestness, "you must not. You must consider your mother. I command you to consider her above everything else! I should forbid you to speak for her sake, if nothing else were involved. I do want you to become brave enough to take this guilt upon yourself, if circumstances permit it; but, they do not permit. Besides," and the minister shook his head sadly, "even that would now be powerless to relieve me from these awful consequences. I might be proved spotlessly innocent of the charge of theft, and yet my reputation would still be hopelessly ruined. It has cost me all, Rollie—all!"

The minister and the penitent, the innocent and the guilty, drew together for the moment linked by that bond of sympathy which invariably exists when one man suffers willingly in the cause of another, and is heightened when the sufferer winces under the pain.

"Even," the minister labored on, "even that hope of Her, of which I told you the other day, has been torn from me."

Rollie's face turned a more ghastly white.

"That?" he murmured huskily.

"That!" assented the minister, with a grave, downward bend of the head.

"It is too much," groaned the young man in real agony of spirit. "Nothing, nothing that is at stake is worth that—can be worth that."

For a moment Hampstead was silent.

"To be loyal, Rollie, to be true to the highest duty is worth everything."

This was what he would have liked to say; it was what he believed; it was what he meant to demonstrate by his course of action; but for the moment he could not say it. Instead, he swallowed hard and looked downward, toying with a paper-knife upon his desk. But his visitor was going now. There was no reason why he should stay, and the minister, as he held open the door, was able to say warningly: "Remember! Not one word for the sake of your mother's life."

"But you," protested the young man, his eyes again staring wildly.

"You are to try not to think of me," declared Hampstead, with low emphasis, "except as my own steadfastness in my duty—if I am able to be steadfast—may help you to be steadfast in yours. Rollie! We understand each other?"

But the young fellow only shook his head negatively with a growing look of awe and wonder in his eyes, then turned and slipped hastily away. He did not understand this man—the bigness of him—at all; but he found himself leaning on him more and more heavily and felt some spiritual cleansing process digging at the inside of himself like the scrape and bite of a steam shovel.

As for the minister, once he was free to think of himself alone, he perceived that Rollie's story had set him free of silence. It supplied the gap in his knowledge which had made him dumb. There was a real defense which could now be offered. Now, too, that there was again some prospect of vindication, he felt his desire for vindication grow.

Up to the present he had waived arraignment on the charge, and had twice secured the customary two days' postponement of the hearing upon preliminary examination. But immediate action should now be taken. Accordingly he located Judge Brennan at his club by telephone and the Assistant District Attorney Searle at his residence, and without explanation asked that the time for his arraignment and preliminary hearing be set as soon as possible.

Next morning the papers presented as the most startling development of the Hampstead Case the fact that the minister had announced himself prepared to go to trial, and the preliminary hearing had been set for Saturday at ten o'clock in Judge Brennan's court room.

Public interest centered, of course, upon the nature of the minister's defense. There was even observable something like a turn of the tide in his favor. Rumor, suspicion, and innuendo for the time had played themselves out. Shrewd managing editors—keen students of mass psychology that they were—discerned signs that these ebbing cross-currents of doubt and uncertainty might sweep suddenly in the opposite direction, and they were alertly prepared to switch the handling of the news if the popular appetite changed.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A WAY THAT WOMEN HAVE

Friday for John was a day of impatience, its tedious hours consumed in turning over and over in his mind the story he would tell upon the witness stand and the plea he would make to the court for a dismissal of the complaint against him; when the day was finished, John found his mind in a rather chaotic state, and it seemed to him that little had been accomplished.

But if little happened that day in Encina which was of moment to his cause, there was an interesting sequence of events transpiring in Chicago, which had at least some relation to the matter; for this was the day upon which the degrees were being conferred.

The assembly hall of the great university was large, and every seat was taken. The huge platform was decked, studded, draped and upholstered with professors, assistant professors and presidents, all in mortar boards and gowns, the somber black of the latter relieved by the rich colors of the insignia indicating the rank or character of their respective degrees.

The presence of all this banked and massed doctorial dignity made the atmosphere of the hall to reek with erudition. The vast number of individuals in front felt their puny intellects dwarfed to pigeon's brains. Hitherto some of them had rather congratulated themselves that they knew the multiplication table and the rule of three. Now their instinct was to grovel.

Yet not all of that assemblage were so impressed. Robert Mitchell was not. Huge of chest, thick-fingered, heavy-shouldered, amiable of his broad countenance, shrewd of eye, and growing thin of that curly brown thatch which had been one of Hibernia's gifts to his ensemble, he surveyed the scene with a critic's air.

Not that Mitchell scorned the pundits of learning. Being the vice-president of a transcontinental line of railroad and therefore necessarily a man of wide acquaintance and of wide employment of the talents of mankind, he knew there were occasions when even he must wait upon the pronouncements of some spectacled creature of the laboratory. Still, he could not help reflecting that he would like to see that pale, gangling pundit on the end try to calculate the exact instant in which to throw the lever to make a flying switch. He would like further to see that fellow with a dome that loomed like a water-tank on the desert try to pick up a string of car numbers as they ran by him on the track, and see how many he could carry in his head and carry right.

In fact, everything about the function expressed itself to Mitchell in terms of traffic. Quite a hall, this. The seats in it came from Grand Rapids, no doubt; or perhaps from Manitowoc. The rate from Grand Rapids was nineteen cents a hundred or thereabouts; from Manitowoc it was twenty,—practically an even basis. But on a trans-continental haul now, to San Francisco for instance, common point rates applied, and Manitowoc had an advantage of five cents a hundred unless—unless the Michigan roads rebated the Michigan manufacturers something of their share in the division of the through rate. Of course, rebates were illegal; but you never could exactly tell what an originating line might not do to keep a sufficient amount of business originating. Take his own line, now, for instance, and borax shipments from the Mojave Desert as against the Union Pacific with borax shipments from Death Valley.

Thus the mind of the great master of transportation roved on while professors rose and droned and presented round rolls to never-ending strings of candidates; but at length there appeared in the serpentine line going up for Master's degrees one presence which took the glaze of speculation from the eye of Mitchell.

The world at large has often noted the anomalous fact that a Doctor's cap and gown does not appear to detract greatly from the masculinity of a man. If anything, it makes a beard, a brow, or the pale, unprosperous furze upon a lip look more virile than otherwise; but that same cap and gown will deceitfully rob a woman of something of the indefinable air of her femininity. It gives her an ascetic cast, and asceticism is unwomanly. But there are exceptions. Some types of women's faces look just a little more fetchingly feminine and bewitchingly alluring under a mortar-board cap than beneath any other form of headdress.

The eye of the railroad man rested now with benevolence and satisfaction upon the shapely, ripened figure of such a woman. Glowing upon her features was a youth and a feminism so vital as to seem that nothing could overcome them. Her eyes were blue and bright; her hair was brown and crinkly; while dimples that refused to be subdued by the dignity of the occasion kept continually upon her features the suggestion of a smile about to break.

But with these evidences of sunny personality, there went stout hints of substantial character. The forehead was good and finely arched to stand for brains. The chin was perhaps a trifle wide to permit the finest oval to the countenance, but it suggested balance and power, and proclaimed that what the mind of this young lady planned, her will might be expected to accomplish. In fact, the young lady stood at this moment face to face with the consummation of a five years' programme, and five years is long for youth to hold a purpose.

With swelling satisfaction the railroad man saw the president of the university now addressing his daughter. It was the same Latin formula that had been repeated scores of times already this morning; but now Mitchell made his first effort to grasp it, to reason out its meaning, all the while greatly admiring his daughter's unfaltering courage under the fire of these unintelligible phrases.

The somewhat irrepressible Miss Bessie was, indeed, doing very well. For a moment the dimples had actually composed themselves, and there was a light of high dignity in the eye, as the candidate extended her hand for the diploma and stood meekly while the silken collar was placed about her neck.

"That is a very able man, that Doctor Winton," remarked Mitchell to his wife. "He has got the same way as the rest of them when he talks; but what he says is sense."

Since Mitchell did not know at all what the university president had said, this remark showed that he had fallen back upon his intuitive judgment of men and had swiftly perceived in the university president something of the same practical qualities that go to the making of a business executive in any other walk.

But an excited whisper was just now coming from behind the white-gloved hand of Mrs. Mitchell. "Oh! look!" that lady exclaimed, "she's got her box lid on crooked!"

It was true that Miss Bessie by some restless twitch of her head or some rebellious outburst of a knot of that crinkly hair, had got her mortar board rakishly atilt. Of course, there were other mortar boards askew, but Bessie's was individualistically and pronouncedly listed far to port. And she didn't care. Bessie was so brimming and beaming with the happiness of life that her whole being was this morning recklessly atilt.

But that afternoon, at about the hour of three, in the ample suite of rooms high up on the lake side of the Annex, which had been occupied by the Mitchells for a week, there was nothing atilt at all about the soul of Bessie. Her spirits were all a-droop. One single glance around showed that the busy preparation for the European trip had been suspended. Wardrobe trunks stood about on end, their contents gaping, while dresses were draped over screens and chairs and laid out upon beds; but the packers had ceased their work. Mrs. Mitchell, distracted between parental love and the fulfillment of long cherished plans, as well as distressed at the exhibition of petulant and even tearful temper which her daughter had been displaying for an hour, walked restlessly from room to room.

"I tell you, it's California for mine!" that young lady affirmed in school-girlish vernacular, while an impatient foot stamped the floor, a dimpled hand smote wilfully upon the arm of a huge, brocaded satin chair, and the blue swimming eyes burned with a rebellious light.

Neither the language nor the mood would seem to become the beautiful Mistress of Arts; but each testified to the survival of the humanness of the young woman. In justice to her, however, it must be explained that she had not begun this upsetting of father's and mother's and her own cherished plan with impetuous defiances. She had begun gently, with sighs, with remarks about longing for California. She felt so tired; she wished she didn't have to travel now. If she could just go back and walk under the palms and orange trees in dear old Los Angeles; if she could get one great big bite of San Francisco fog, and see a little desert and a mountain or two, before starting out for this junky old Europe, she would be reconciled.

Otherwise, she would not be reconciled. Of course, she would go,—since they had planned it for so long, and since mamma's heart was set upon it;—but she would go unreconciled.

Reconciled! Mrs. Mitchell knew perfectly well what reconciled meant, but she did not know just what Bessie meant by dinging on that word.

After fifteen minutes it appeared that Bessie was through with hints. She had begun to boldly propose, and then earnestly to plead, and finally tearfully to demand that the European trip be postponed two weeks.

"But my child! The trip is all planned. The passages are paid for, everything is ready," protested Mrs. Mitchell.

"But what's the good of being the slave of your plans? You don't have to do a thing you don't want to just because you've planned."

Bessie's lip was full and ripe when she pouted and her voice was freighted heavily with protest and appeal. How pretty her eyelids were when there was a tear quivering on the lashes like a ball of quicksilver. And how really enchanting she looked, as with hair a bit disheveled and color heightening, she went on to argue impetuously:

"What's the good of having a private car? What's the good of being a vice-president's wife and daughter, if you can't change your mind and go galloping out to California when you feel like it? Back to your own home! Back to your own people! Back where the scenery is the grandest in the world! Back where the sky is high enough that you don't have to shoulder the zenith out of the way in the morning so that you can stand up straight and take a full breath."

"Bessie Mitchell!" exclaimed her mother at this juncture, turning on her offspring accusingly. "What has got into you? Something has! You're up to something. What is it?"

Bessie brooked her mother's discerning glance and then dodged it, very much as if that lady had hurled at her the silver-backed hair brush she held in her hand.

"Why," she exclaimed with an air of injured innocence; "nothing has got into me. I was just taking one last look at the California papers, and it made me homesick."

She made a gesture toward a pile of papers that surrounded her chair. Mrs. Mitchell paused and cerebrated. Somewhere about two o'clock of the afternoon, Bessie had stepped to the telephone.

"Send me up the last week of San Francisco and Los Angeles papers," she ordered.

The papers came. She went through the Los Angeles papers first, turning their pages casually, with occasional comments to her mother. And then she started the San Francisco file, scanning this time more swiftly and more casually until upon the very last of them she became suddenly absorbed in uncommunicative silence; after which the musings and the sighings had begun, followed by this absurd proposal, this passionate outburst, and this deadlock of the two women behind entrenchments of newspapers on the one hand and barricades of trunks upon the other.

As between her strong-willed daughter and her strong-willed self, Mrs. Mitchell knew that she generally emerged defeated. So far now she had been defeated—at least to the extent of an armistice. The packers had been stopped, while the argument went on.

But in the meantime Mrs. Mitchell was violating the rules of war by bringing up reinforcements. Mr. Mitchell was on his way over from the Monadnock Building. He would soon settle Miss Bessie; that is, if he did not make a cowardly and instant surrender, because Mrs. Mitchell knew well enough he would rather sit on the rear platform of his private car and watch the miles of steel and cinder stream from under him for ten hours a day for the rest of his life than visit his native sod for five minutes.

When Mrs. Mitchell heard her husband's voice in the next room, she hurried out to fortify him.

Bessie also heard the voice and hurried to the bathroom to remove traces of tears; for tears were not powerful arguments with her father. Smiles went farther and faster. Kisses were the deciding artillery.

Father and mother, advancing cautiously upon daughter's position, found it unoccupied. But the papers were strewn about. Mitchell picked up the one which lay in the chair. His glance was entirely casual, but suddenly his blue eye started and then blazed.

"The hell!" he ejaculated, and read eagerly down the column.

"Well, I be damned!" was his next contribution to the silence.

Mrs. Mitchell stared at her husband in amazement. Then, seizing her reading glass, for a reading glass was so much better form than spectacles, she glanced over her husband's shoulder, read the headline and a few words following.

"The deceitfulness of that child!" she ejaculated, an expression of indignant amazement on her face, while the hand with the reading glass dropped to her hip, and her eyes were turned upon her husband.

"I always knew that boy's good-heartedness would get him into trouble some day," the good woman averred after a moment.

"Well," rejoined her husband, in tones sharp with emphasis, "I'd back up on a freight clear round the world to get him out. Our trip to Europe is off. We go west on nine to-night."

Mr. Mitchell started for the telephone, and Mrs. Mitchell's eye followed him approvingly, a look of sympathy and motherliness triumphing over every other expression upon her face.

Now there wasn't any particular obligation on the part of Robert Mitchell to John Hampstead. Hampstead had merely worked for Mitchell through eight years of faithfulness in small things, which was a way that Hampstead had. But as the Vice-President of the Great Southwestern looked back, those eight years of faithfulness bulked rather large, which, again, was a way that Robert Mitchell had.

As to Bessie! But that is a way that women have. The deeper and the more serious her attachment for John Hampstead had grown, the more guilefully she had concealed that fact from even the suspicion of her parents. Yet now her disguise was penetrated, she sobbed it all out on her mother's shoulder and got the finest, tenderest assurances of sympathy and enthusiastic connivance that could be vouchsafed by one woman to another. The Mitchells were that way. Let hearts and happiness be concerned, and all other considerations of life could ride on the brake-beams.

CHAPTER XXXV

ON PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION

But though a very human hope was in his breast, the man who went out to face a public hearing on Saturday morning upon a charge of felony in the city where a week before he had been a popular idol, was not the same man who had stood trembling and bewildered in the vault room.

Rose had noticed first merely a physical change in her brother's appearance, as from day to day the situation became more intense. She saw lines deepen on his face, the knot of pain grow again and again upon his brow, and the whiteness of his skin increase to a point where it ceased to be white and became a parchment yellow, only paler than his tawny hair. But later she became conscious that there was taking place also a spiritual change, a certain rare elevation of the character of the man, giving at times the eerie feeling that this was not her brother, but some transfiguration taking place before her eyes.

When John Hampstead appeared in Judge Brennan's court room, something of this exaltation of character was discernible, even to those who had known the minister casually. Desiring ardently a happy outcome, the man revealed in himself something of a new capacity to endure yet further reverses.

Rose, Dick, and Tayna had been determined to accompany John and to sit beside him as he faced his accusers; but he forbade this, declaring that it would be construed by his enemies as an attempt to create sympathy.

Yet, despite the stoutness of the clergyman's hope for justice, the sight of the court room, of Judge Brennan upon his bench, the clerk and the official reporter at their desks, Searle, Wyatt, the detectives, the massed spectators,—packed, craning, curious,—and the vast crowd that had surged in the streets about the building and in the corridors, through which way had to be made for him, were all such sinister reminders of the position in which he stood, that for the time being they crumpled the very breastwork of innocence itself.

"The case of the People versus John Hampstead," announced the judge in matter-of-fact tones.

There was a slight movement among the group of attorneys, principals, officers, and witnesses within the rail and before the long table, as they either hitched chairs, or leaned forward with eyes and ears attentive. Outside, the closely packed onlookers breathed short in hushed expectancy.

"Prisoner at the bar, stand up!"

It was the monotonous, unfeeling voice of the clerk who said this, himself arising.

Hampstead, accustomed as his own legal battlings had made him to court formalities and to seeing men arraigned in just this language, failed to comprehend its significance when addressed to him. For an appreciable instant of time he sat unheeding, until every eye in the throng and the glance of every officer of the court stabbing into his face with inquiring wonder, recalled him to his position. Then he arose hastily, with traces of confusion which were so instantly repressed that when necks already craned stretched a little farther, and eyes already staring set their gaze yet more intently on the tall figure of the man, they saw his strongly moulded features as gravely impassive as some weather-blasted granite face upon a mountain.

But for all its massy strength, it was seen again to be a gentle face. The lips were firmly set, but the expression of the mouth was kindly. The eyes were fixed upon the clerk who read the charge against him, while the prisoner listened with a look at once solemn and dutiful, for it seemed that again John Hampstead had risen equal to the height on which he stood.

The tableau was an impressive one. It revealed the majesty of man bowing before the majesty of the law. It seemed to portray at once the ponderousness and the power fulness of organized government. A woman who was almost a stranger had touched a tiny lever and set the machinery of the law in operation against the most shining mark in all the community; and here was the man, with the guillotine of judgment poised above his head, answerable for his acts with his liberty and his reputation.

In feelingless monotones that galloped and hurdled through the maze of technical phrasings, the clerk read the complaint which charged the minister with the crime of burglary; then, pausing for breath, he asked the formal question:

"Is this your true name?"

"It is," the minister replied quietly, but in a voice of vibrant, carrying quality that must have penetrated to the outward corridor, and seemed to sweep a sense of moral power to every listener's ear.

The voice was answered by a sigh, involuntary and composite, that broke from somewhere beyond the rail. The hearing was on. The unbelievable had come to pass: John Hampstead, pastor of All People's Church, was actually standing trial like a common felon.

Briefly and casually the Court instructed Hampstead to his rights and that he was entitled to be represented by counsel of his own choosing, or to have counsel appointed for him by the Court.

The minister, still standing and speaking with deliberate composure, thanked the Court for its consideration, but stated that without disrespect to the legal profession which he greatly honored, he did not feel that his cause required expert defense; that in his experience he had acquired a considerable knowledge of court practice and would depend upon that, trusting his Honor to put him right if he stumbled into wrong.

The judge nodded comprehension and assent, and the defendant sat down.

"Are the People ready?" inquired the Court.

"We are," answered the crisp, crackly voice of Searle.

"And the defense?"

Hampstead, his arms folded passively, responded with a slight affirmative bow.

"We will call Miss Alice Higgins," announced Searle, his voice this time reflecting that sense of the dramatic which hung over the court room like a cloud, impregnating its atmosphere as if with an electric charge.

The woman known as Marien Dounay had been sitting at the right of Searle, gowned in tailored black, her person stripped of everything that looked like ornament. The wide, flat brim of her hat was carefully horizontal and valanced by a curtain of veiling, which, while black and large of cord, was wide meshed enough to show that the very colors of her cheeks were subdued, as if her whole person were in mourning over the somber duty to which she regretfully found herself compelled. And yet the beauty of her features, adorned by the black and sweeping eyebrows and lighted by the smouldering jet of her eyes, was never more striking than now, when, after standing for a moment, tall and graceful on the raised platform of the witness chair, she sat down, and leaning back composedly, swung about to where her glance could alternate between the eye of the Court who would hear her and that of Searle who would interrogate.

But though her composure appeared complete, and never upon any stage had her magnetic presence more completely centered all attention upon itself than in this melodrama of real life, it was none the less noticeable to the discerning that she had not glanced at Hampstead, whose sleeve her arm must have brushed in passing to the witness chair; and that she still avoided looking where he sat, but six feet distant, his own eyes resting upon her face with an odd, speculative light in them.

"Please state your name, business occupation or profession, and place of residence," began Searle, putting the opening interrogatory in the usual form through sheer force of habit.

"I am an actress by profession. My name is Alice Higgins; my place of residence is New York City."

"In your profession as an actress and to the public generally you are known as Marien Dounay?"

"Yes," replied the witness.

"You are the complainant in this action?"

"Yes."

"I will ask you," began Searle, "if you have ever seen this necklace before?"

He drew from a crumpled envelope that familiar tiny string of fire and offered it to the witness. Miss Dounay took it, passed it affectionately through her fingers, during which the brilliance of the gems appeared to be magnified, and then, holding the necklace by the two ends, dropped it for a moment upon her bosom,—a touch of naturalness that was either the height of art or the supreme of femininity.

"They are my diamonds," she replied.

"And what is their value?"

"Twenty-two thousand dollars."

"Lawful money of the United States?"

"Yes."

"Now, Miss Dounay," continued Searle, "will you be kind enough to relate to the Court when and under what circumstances you first missed your diamonds."

Miss Dounay told her story briefly and skillfully, with an appearance of reluctance when she came to relate the circumstances and facts which pointed to the minister as the thief. She stated that Hampstead had always shown curiosity regarding the diamonds and had especially questioned her concerning their value. As a trusted friend, whom she had known for years, and who during the last several weeks had visited her frequently and become rather frankly acquainted with her personal habits and mode of life, he knew where she kept the diamonds. That so far as she knew, he was the only one of her acquaintances who possessed this knowledge; that she had worn the diamonds in company with him during the evening preceding the supper party, at which she appeared without them; that no one but her guests were in this room in which the diamonds were kept temporarily, and that no one but him, so far as she remembered observing, was in that room alone; that it was her custom to keep the box containing these and other jewels in the hotel safe, and when, after the departure of her guests, she went to the casket to send it down-stairs, it was gone.

Her story done, and to the attorney's complete satisfaction, Searle then put the final formal questions:

"This property was taken against your will and without your consent?"

"Yes."

"This all happened in the City of Oakland, County of Alameda and the State of California?"

"Yes."

"That is all," concluded the prosecutor.

"Cross-examine," directed the Court, turning to the defendant.

"I have no desire to cross-examine," replied the minister quietly, but again with that vibrant, far-carrying note in his utterance.

"You are excused," said the judge to the actress.

With an expression of relief, Miss Dounay left the stand, still without once having directed her gaze at the accused, although he continued from time to time to regard her fixedly with a curious, doubtful look.

"Miss Julie Moncrief," announced the prosecutor.

Red-eyed and frightened, the French maid took the stand. In a trembling voice, and with at least one appealing glance at the minister, who appeared to regard her more sympathetically than her own mistress, the little woman gave her testimony. It told of finding the defendant alone in this room where the guests had been inspecting the models for the London production of the play. He was not near the table upon which the models were displayed, but standing by the chiffonier, with his arm absently thrown across the corner of it, and the hand within a few inches of the small drawer in which the diamonds reposed temporarily.

"What part of his body was toward the chiffonier?" asked the prosecutor.

"His back and side."

"Where was he looking?"

"Out toward the room to which the guests had withdrawn."

"As if watching for an opportunity of some sort?" suggested Searle.

Hampstead started, and his eyes kindled, but he did not speak. The Court, however, did.

"In view of the fact," interposed his Honor, "that Doctor Hampstead is unrepresented by counsel and taking no advantage of a technical defense, I will remind you, Mr. Searle, that your last question calls for a conclusion of the witness. She may testify where he was looking, but she cannot tell what she thinks his actions implied."

"Of course, your Honor, that is right," confessed Searle quickly. "The witness is somewhat hesitant and embarrassed, and the form of my question was inadvertent. Under the circumstances," he added suavely, "I am being especially careful not to take advantage of the defendant."

"That must be apparent to all, Mr. Searle," the judge palavered in return.

"Where was he looking?" queried Searle.

Having been properly coached by the attorney's question and his reply to the judge, the half frightened girl faltered:

"He was looking out, as if watching for an opportunity."

Color mounted to the cheeks of the judge. Searle looked properly surprised. The defendant smiled cynically.

"Strike out that portion of the answer which involves the conclusion as to why he was looking out," instructed the judge solemnly to the reporter.

"Certainly," exclaimed Searle apologetically. None the less, he was satisfied with his manoeuvre. He knew the effect of the little French girl's conclusion could not be stricken out of the mind of the judge who had heard it expressed, nor out of the mind of the public before whom he was in reality trying his case.

"State what further you observed," directed the attorney. "Did you see him move, or anything?"

"He did not move; he only smiled at me and was still there in the same position when I went out. A few minutes later, I was surprised to see him bidding Miss Dounay good night."

"Strike out that the witness was surprised," commanded the Court sternly, while Julie shivered at the sharpness of Judge Brennan's tone.

"That is all," continued Searle.

"Do you wish to cross-examine?" inquired the judge, directing his glance to Hampstead.

"I do not," replied the minister.

This time the judge looked surprised, and there were slight murmurings, rustlings, and whisperings beyond the rail. The faltering testimony of the little maid had driven another nail deeply in the circumstantial case against the minister, and he had not made the slightest effort to draw it out by the few words of cross-examination that might have broken its hold entirely. He might, for instance, have asked if she saw any one else alone in this room. But the minister did not ask it.

Searle went on piling up his case. The detectives testified to the arrest of the minister, to the search of his person and house, and to the finding of the diamonds in the vault box, after which the jewels themselves were introduced in evidence and marked: People's Exhibit "A", while the envelope which had contained them and bore the minister's name and address upon the corner, became People's Exhibit "B."

Each detective and Wyatt was asked to describe minutely the actions of the minister from the time when the personal search ending in the discovery of the safe deposit key was proposed until the time when the diamonds were exposed to view upon the table in the vault room. By this means, Searle got before the Court the demeanor of the minister as indicating a consciousness of guilt.

Relentless in pursuing this line, Searle put on the defendant's own bondsmen, Wilson, Wadham, and Hayes, compelling them to describe, although with evident reluctance, the impetuous outburst against the opening of the box when the bond was being arranged, and the scene in the vault to which they had been witnesses.

Wilson, chafing at the position into which he was forced, was further roused when Searle exclaimed suddenly:

"I will ask you if the defendant, on or about the day that these diamonds were stolen, did not approach you for the urgent loan of a considerable sum of money."

Wilson glared and was silent.

"Did he, or did he not?" persisted Searle sharply.

"He did," snapped Wilson.

"How did he want it, cash or checks?"

"He wanted cash, but I do not see, Mr. Searle—" he began.

"Excuse me, Mr. Wilson, but I think you do see," replied Searle. "Did you give it to him?"

"I did," replied Wilson, "and I would have given him more—"

"I ask that a part of this answer be stricken out, your Honor, as volunteered by the witness, and not in response to the question," demanded Searle brusquely.

"I think we should not let ourselves become too technical," replied the Court, with a chiding glance at Searle, for Mr. Wilson was a person of some importance in the community.

Searle, slightly huffed, again addressed the witness.

"Did the defendant tell you what he wanted this large sum of money for?"

"No. Furthermore—" began the witness.

"That will do! That will do!" exclaimed Searle rising, and motioning with his hand as if to stop the witness's mouth. "That is all," he added quickly. "Cross-examine."

Wilson turned expectantly to Hampstead. He was aching to be permitted to say more, to offer testimony that would break the force of that which he had just given. But the minister, comprehending fully the generous desire of his friend, merely looked him in the eye and shook his head; for this was one of the trails neither he nor any one else must be permitted to pursue.

Having asked this series of questions of Wilson about the money, apparently as an afterthought, which it was not, Searle then recalled Hayes and Wadham, and put the same questions to them. Each made the same attempt to qualify and enlarge, but each was carefully held to a statement which pictured John Hampstead making desperate efforts among his friends to raise quickly what must have been a very large sum of money, for an unexplained purpose.

Searle felt this to be the climax of his case.

"The People rest," he exclaimed with dramatic suddenness, sitting down and inserting a thumb in his arm-hole, while after a defiant glance at the minister, he turned and scanned the spectators outside the rail for signs of approval of the skillful handling of their cause by him, their oath-bound servant.

But the eyes of the spectators were on the defendant, who now stepped to the platform and stood with upraised right hand before the clerk to be sworn. As he composed himself in the witness chair, his manner was cool and even meditative. The central figure in this tense, emotional drama, which had every significance for himself, he seemed scarcely more than aware of his surroundings.

"My name," he began deliberately, "is John Hampstead. I am thirty-one years old, and a minister of the gospel. I reside in the County of Alameda. I am the person named in this complaint. I was at Miss Dounay's supper party, although I did not stay to supper. I was probably in the exact position described by the maid, for I believe her to be truthful. However, I do not remember the incident, beyond the fact that the group gradually withdrew from this room, and I remained there in reflective mood for a short interval. I saw Miss Dounay's diamonds last that evening when she excused herself from the company to change her costume. I saw them next the morning after, upon the desk in my study."

The minister paused. The massed audience leaned forward, intent and breathless. Now his real defense was beginning. His manner, balanced and impersonal, was carrying conviction with it. The man was the defendant—the prisoner at the bar—yet he spoke deliberately, as if not himself but the truth were at issue.

"They were brought there," the witness was saying, "by a man who told me that he had stolen them. He appeared to be excited. Indeed, his condition was pitiable. I advised him to immediately return the diamonds to Miss Dounay, confess his crime to her, and throw himself upon her mercy; but there were circumstances which made it impossible for him to act immediately. That is all."

The minister turned from the Court, whom he had been addressing, and faced Searle, as if awaiting cross-examination. The audience had listened with painful interest to the minister's story. The manner of it had unquestionably carried conviction, but its very unbolstered simplicity had in it something of the shock which provokes doubt. This effect was heightened by its extreme brevity and a suggestion of reticence in the narrative.

"Have you concluded?" asked the Court, reflecting the general surprise.

"I have," replied the minister, with the same quiet voice in which he had given his testimony.

"Begin your cross-examination," instructed Judge Brennan.

"Who is the man who brought these diamonds to you?" asked Searle, hurling the question swiftly.

"I cannot tell you," answered the minister gravely.

"Why can you not tell?" The voice of Searle was harshly insistent. "Don't you know who the man was?"

"I do, most assuredly."

"Why can you not tell it?"

"Because the secret is not mine."

"Not yours?" A sneer appeared on the lips of Searle.

"It came to me by way of the Protestant confessional," explained the minister.

"The Protestant confessional! What do you mean by that?" barked the prosecutor.

"Simply," replied the minister, "that the instinct of confession is very strong in every nature moved to penitence and a hope of reform; so that every minister and priest of whatever faith becomes the repository of a vast number of confessions of fault and failure, some trivial and some grave. I used the term 'Protestant confessional' because the Roman Catholic Church erects the confessional to a place of established and formal importance. In most other communions it is merely incidental to pastoral experience, but none the less it is a factor in all effort at rehabilitation of character."

"And you will not give the name, even to protect yourself?"

"It is not," replied the witness, "a matter in which I feel that I have any choice. The confession was not made to me as an individual, but to me as a minister of God. I will hold that confidence sacred and inviolate at whatever cost until the Day of Judgment."

Dramatically, though unconsciously, the witness lifted his right hand, as though he renewed an oath to God.

For the first time, too, the utterance of the defendant had betrayed personal feeling, and for a moment there was a sheen upon his features, as of a man who had toiled upward through shadows to where the light from above broke radiantly upon his brow.

"And you take advantage of the fact that such a confession as you allege is privileged under the law and need not be testified to by you?"

"As I said before," reiterated the minister, with a calm dignity that refused to be ruffled by the sneer in the cross-examiner's question, "I do not feel that the secret is mine."

The impression that at this point the witness was retiring behind intrenchments that were very strong was no more lost upon Searle than upon the spectators, and he immediately attacked from another quarter.

"We are to understand, then, Doctor, that your guilty demeanor which has been testified to by your friends as well as the officers was entirely because you knew the discovery of the diamonds in your box would lend color to the charge made against you?"

This was another trail that Hampstead must not allow to be pursued.

"You are at liberty to make whatever interpretation of my demeanor you wish, Mr. Searle," he replied, a trifle tartly.

"Yes, Doctor Hampstead; we are agreed upon that," rejoined the prosecutor dryly, at the same time making a gallery play with his eyes. "You say," Searle continued presently, "it was temporarily impossible for the man who brought these diamonds to you to return them to Miss Dounay. Why did you not return them yourself instead of placing them in your vault to await the convenience of the thief?"

The insulting scorn of the latter part of this question was meant to be diverting to the audience as well as highly disconcerting to the witness, but the minister smothered the sneer by replying sincerely and courteously:

"I felt, Mr. Searle, that my problem was to rebuild in the man a sense of responsibility to a trust and the courage to act upon a moral impulse. Wisely, or unwisely, I insisted that the entire procedure of restoration should devolve upon the penitent himself. His first spiritual battle was to nerve himself to face the owner of the diamonds."

"Precisely," observed Mr. Searle smoothly, abandoning the jury rail, against which he had been leaning, to balance himself upon the balls of the feet and rub his palms blandly. "And in the meantime, while this thief was gathering his courage, did your consideration for your friend, Miss Dounay, impel you to notify her that the diamonds were in your custody and would be returned to her very soon?"

"Not alone was I impelled to do that," replied the minister; "but the unfortunate man urged such a step upon me. I declined for the same reason. My entire course of action was dictated by a desire to make this man morally stronger by compelling him to assume and discharge his own responsibilities. I was willing to point out the course; but he must walk the way alone. I will forestall your next question by saying that for the same reason I did not notify the police."

Searle was nettled by the easy compactness with which the minister cemented the walls of his defense more closely by each reply to the questions in cross-examination.

"You are aware, Mr. Hampstead," he thundered with a sudden change of tactics, "that the act which you have just set forth, so far from setting up a defense to this charge, proves you guilty under the law as an accessory after the fact."

"I am not aware of it," replied the minister, with distinct emphasis. "My impression was that the law considers not only an act but the intent of the act. The intent of my act was not to conceal a crime, but to reconstruct the character of a man."

Searle darted a hasty and apprehensive glance at the massed faces behind the rail.

"That is all," he exclaimed dramatically, with a cynical smile and an uptoss of his hands, calculated cleverly to portray his opinion of the utter lack of standing such replies as those of the minister could gain him in a court of justice.

Judge Brennan looked at Hampstead. "Have you anything in rebuttal?" he asked.

"Nothing," replied the minister, arising and stepping down to his chair at the long table, where he remained standing while the attentive expression of Court and spectators indicated appreciation that the climax of the defendant's effort was at hand.

The very bigness of the thing the man was trying to do was in some sense an attest of character, and here and there among the onlookers ran little currents of reviving sympathy for the clergyman, who stood waiting quietly for the moment in which to begin his final effort as an attorney in his own behalf.

Keenly sensitive to the subtlest emotions of the crowd, he understood perfectly well that the effect of his testimony had been at least sufficient to secure a verdict of suspended judgment from the spectators; and he expected far more from the balanced mind of the judge; so that it was with a feeling of renewed confidence, almost an anticipation of triumph, that he prepared to make the final move.

"If the Court please," he began dispassionately, as if pleading for a cause that had no more than an abstract meaning for himself, "I desire to move at this time the dismissal of the complaint, upon the ground that the evidence is insufficient to warrant the holding of the defendant for trial before the Superior Court."

The minister stopped for breath, and there was another of those strange, composite sighs from beyond the rail.

"In support of that motion," and a note of growing significance appeared in the speaker's tone, "I argue nothing, except to ask this Court to accept as true every word of testimony spoken by every witness heard upon the stand this morning."

The Court looked puzzled, but the ministerial defendant went on:

"I believe the truth has been spoken by Miss Dounay—by the maid—by the officers—and by my own friends. Yet the facts testified to may be true,"—the minister's voice rose,—"and the inference to which they point be wickedly and damnably false! It is so with this case; for be it noted that I ask your Honor to consider also that my testimony is true. It denies no statement; it controverts no fact in the case of the prosecution. On the contrary, it confirms them; but it also explains them." Again the defendant's voice was rising. "It confirms the facts, but it utterly refutes the inference that this defendant at the bar is guilty. Consider the entire fabric of evidence as a seamless garment of truth, and you can dismiss the complaint with an untroubled brow. Reason is satisfied! Justice is done!"

Hampstead paused, and a shade of apprehension came to his face, for his eye had traveled for a moment to that massed expectancy without the rail.

"The verdict of your Honor is to me"—Hampstead in his growing earnestness had abandoned the fictional distinction between the pleader and his client,—"of more than usual importance, for by it hangs the verdict of the people whose interest is attested by those packed benches yonder. Without disrespect to your Honor, I can say that I care more for their verdict than for that of any twelve men in any jury box or any judge upon any bench.

"But under the circumstances the whole people cannot actually judge—they can only be my executioners. They have not heard me speak. They can not look me in the eye, nor observe by my demeanor whether I speak like an honest man or a contemptible fraud. They see me only through a cloud of skillfully engendered suspicion. They hear my voice only faintly amid a clamorous confusion of poisoned tongues. Your Honor must see for them, and speak for them. Your Honor's verdict will be their verdict. I tremble for that verdict. I plead for it!

"I ask your Honor to take account of the difficulty of my position, presuming, as the law instructs the Court to presume, that it is the position of an innocent person. Bound by the most inviolable vow which a man can take, I am unable to offer to you a conclusive defense by presenting the man who committed the crime. He may be in this court room now, cowering with a consciousness of his guilt and in awe at beholding its consequences to the one who has helped him. He may be an officer of this Court; he might be your Honor, sitting upon the bench, which, of course, is unthinkable—yet no more unthinkable to me than that I should be charged with this crime. But though he be here at my very side, I cannot reach out my hand and say: 'That is the man.' I will not touch him nor look at him. Unless he speaks—and I confess that there is an outside reason why I should absolutely forbid him to speak—there is no defense that can be offered, beyond the simple story I have told you.

"May I not, also, without being accused of egotism, remind your Honor that if it is decided that I appear sufficiently guilty to warrant a criminal trial in the Superior Court, my work in this community will be at an end."

The minister was speaking for the first time with a show of deep feeling, and an indulgent sneer appeared upon the lips of Searle. This was not legitimate argument. Yet a mere preacher might not be supposed to know it, and therefore he, Searle, would magnanimously allow the man to talk himself out, if his Honor did not stop him.

But the Court was also complaisant, and the minister went on with passionate earnestness to plead:

"Regardless of the ultimate verdict of a jury, the stigma of a felony trial will be upon me for life. From this very court room I shall be taken to your identification bureau. I shall be weighed, stripped, measured—my thumb prints taken—my features photographed like those of any criminal!"

As Hampstead proceeded, his speech began to be punctuated with spasmodic breaks, as if the prospective humiliation was one at which his sensitive nature revolted violently.

"And those finger prints," he labored—"those measurements—and that photograph—will become a part—of the criminal records—of the State of California—for as long as the paper upon which they are made shall last!"

"No! No!! No!!!" shrilled a hysterical voice that burst out suddenly and ended as abruptly as it began.

Strangely enough it was the complaining witness who had cried out. She had risen and stood with hands outstretched protestingly to the minister, while whispering hoarsely: "It cannot be! It cannot be!"

"Madam!" thundered the minister, viewing the woman sternly, his own emotion of self-sympathy disappearing at this unexpected sign of softness in her, while his eyes blazed indignantly: "That is a police regulation which by long custom has come to have all the force of law. If you doubt it, your accomplice there will so inform you!"

Hampstead, as he uttered the last words, had shifted his blazing glance to Searle, who at first disconcerted and endeavoring to pull Miss Dounay back into her seat, now rose and turned toward the defendant, his own face aflame, and hot words poised upon his tongue.

But Judge Brennan was rapping for silence.

"Compose yourself, madam!" he ordered sternly.

But before the minister's accusing glance, Miss Dounay was already dropping back into her chair, and as if in dismay at her outbreak, buried her face in her hands, while Searle, quivering with fury, snarled out:

"I resent, your Honor, with all my manhood, the epithet which this defendant has gratuitously and insultingly flung at me."

"Be seated, Mr. Searle," commanded the judge. "Doctor Hampstead's position is very distressing. He will withdraw the objectionable epithet."

"I withdraw it," acknowledged the minister, recovering his poise; yet he said it doggedly and uncompromisingly, qualifying his withdrawal with: "But your Honor will take into account that the manner of the representative of the District Attorney has been offensive to me, though some of the time veiled by an exaggerated pretense of courtesy. It has seemed to me the manner of an accomplice of the complaining witness, and I withdraw the statement more out of respect to this Court than out of consideration for him."

Searle glared, but resumed his seat, giving vent to his temper in a violent jerk of his chair as he dropped into it.

"You may conclude your remarks," observed the Court to Hampstead.

"There is nothing to add," replied the minister, after a reflective interval, "except to urge again that your Honor consider the grave consequences of yielding to a one-sided view of the case. I ask only that truth be honored and justice done!"

With this the defendant sat down.

Miss Dounay appeared to have regained her composure, but, white and still, her glance was now fixed as noticeably upon the face of the defendant as before she had markedly avoided it.

With a hitch to his vest and a forward thrust of the chin, Searle rose to attack the plea of the defendant.

"Your Honor may well ask with Pilate: 'What is truth?'" he began, the manner of his speech showing that while his self-control was admirable, his mood was that vindictive one into which many a prosecutor appears to work himself when arising to assail the cause of a defendant.

"However," he prefaced, "I must first apologize to your Honor for the momentary loss of control on the part of the complaining witness. Your Honor will realize that her emotions were wantonly and deliberately played upon by the defendant in a skillful endeavor to create sympathy for himself. The fact that he succeeded so readily is an eloquent bit of testimony to the sympathetic nature of this estimable and brilliant woman, to the ease with which her confidence is gained, and the painful reluctance with which she performs her duty in this sad case: for any way we view it, it is a sad case, your Honor, and no one regrets more than I the harsh words which must be spoken in the course of my own duty to the people of this county.

"However," and Searle paused for a moment as if both gathering breath and steeling himself for the vicious assault he proposed to make: "Addressing myself to the plea of the defendant for a dismissal of this case, I must say flatly that the motion itself, the argument to support it, and the testimony upon which it is based, constitute the most audacious combination of effrontery and offensive egotism to which a court was ever asked to listen. I congratulate your Honor upon the patience and self-control with which you have contained yourself while permitting this defendant to go on from statement to statement, involving himself deeper in this dastardly crime with every word.

"If, your Honor, in all my days at the bar as a prosecutor, I have ever looked into the face of a guilty man, it is the face of this man!—this egotist!—this boastful braggart!—" As Searle hurled each epithet, he worked his passion higher and shook an offensively, impudently accusing finger at the defendant; "this hypocrite!—this paddler of the palms of neurasthenic women!—this associate of criminals!—this shepherd of black sheep, who now sits here with a sneer upon his lips—lips which have just committed the most appalling sacrilege by seeking to cloak the guilt of a dastardly act with the sacred gown of a priest of God!"

As a matter of fact, there was no sneer discernible to any one else upon the lips of the defendant. At first smiling at the mock-fury into which Searle was lashing himself, they had become white and bloodless under the sting of these heaped-up insults. But this last was more than the man could stand in silence.

"Is my position so defenseless, I ask your Honor," Hampstead interrupted, "that I am compelled to endure this?"

The judge bestowed a chiding glance upon the attorney, but replied to the minister:

"A certain liberty is allowed the prosecutor."

"But that liberty should not be a license to defame!" protested the defendant.

"Am I to be permitted to proceed with my argument or not?" bawled Searle in his most bullying manner, while he glared at the audacious minister.

"You may proceed," replied the Court, affecting not to notice the disrespect with which it had been addressed.

Searle continued, lapsing now into an argumentative strain.

"The defendant himself has said that the case against him is without a flaw. He has had the effrontery to urge that your Honor accept the testimony against him as true testimony. He has only argued that if we are to believe the witnesses for the prosecution, we are also to believe him. I say—I affirm with all the force at my command—that we are not to believe him at all!

"I ask your Honor to consider first the motive for his testimony. The man is hopelessly involved. The charge of burglary is a simple one, compared with the broader indictment of moral profligacy which the whole community is at this moment prepared to find against him. Ruin stares him in the face. His pose is shattered. His disguise is penetrated. If he goes from this court room to the identification bureau of which he has spoken in his mawkish plea for sympathy, as I believe he will go, he goes to be catalogued with criminals, and to be damned forever in the esteem of his neighbors.

"To avert that, would not your Honor expect this defendant to be willing to perjure himself without a qualm? Will a man who has lived a lie before a whole community for five years hesitate to add another in an endeavor to avert his impending fate? Will a man who has stolen the jewels of his trusted friend hesitate to swear falsely in denial of such an act? Will a man who has worked upon the sympathy of his friends to secure large sums of money for a purpose so doubtful that it is undisclosed— Will he hesitate to work upon the sympathies here by words and implications, by innuendoes that are as false to religion as to fact?

"Your Honor knows that he would not so hesitate. Your Honor knows, through long familiarity with the law of evidence, that the testimony of a defendant in his own behalf, because of his intense interest in the outcome of his case, is always to be weighed with extreme care.

"I believe under such circumstances not only the motives, the springs of action, but the probable mental processes of the witness are to be taken into account. I ask your Honor what a defendant involved in the mesh of circumstantial evidence here presented would probably do under these circumstances. Your own judgment answers with mine that he would probably lie, and exactly as this defendant has lied!"

Again Searle turned and shook his long arm with insulting undulations in the direction of the defendant, after which he continued:

"Turning from probabilities to experience, I ask your Honor out of his memory of years of service upon the bench, what does the arrested thief—taken like this one, with the loot in his possession—what does he do? Why, he either confesses his crime, or he tells you that he is not the thief but an innocent third party, who unwittingly received the loot from the man of straw, whom his imagination and his necessities have created. That latter alternative is the defense of this alleged minister of the Gospel! He had not the honesty to confess, but tells instead that same old lie which criminals and felons have been telling in that same witness chair since this Court was first established.

"Yet this defendant's story has not even the merit of a pretense to ignorance that the goods he held were stolen goods. He boldly admits that he knew they were stolen; that he was personally acquainted with the owner; that he knew the distress of her mind; knew the police departments of half a dozen cities were searching for the jewels, and that the newspapers were giving the widest publicity to the facts and thus joining in the chase for loot and looter. And yet he calmly permits these diamonds to repose in his vault with never a word or hint to calm the distress of his friend or relieve the peace officers of burdensome labors in which they were engaging and the unnecessary expense which they were thus putting upon the taxpayers who support them!

"Why, your Honor, if the witness's own story is true, he has given this Court an abundant ground for holding him to answer to the Superior Court, not indeed upon the exact charge named in that complaint, but as an accessory after the fact to said charge.

"But it is not true. To use his own phrase, it is wickedly and damnably false! So palpably false that it collapses upon the mere examination of your Honor's mind without argument from me.

"Yet I cannot close without calling attention to the sheer recklessness with which this thief and perjurer has heightened the infamy of his position by an act of brazen sacrilege. He has sought to make plausible his weak, unimaginative lie that he received these goods instead of stealing them, by pretending that he received them in his capacity as a religious confessor, under conditions that bound him to a silence which the voice of God alone could break.

"That, in itself, is a claim that should bring the blush of shame to the cheek and rouse the hot resentment of every honest minister and of every honest priest, and make them join with the outraged feelings of honest laymen and of citizens generally in demanding that justice descend upon this man and strike him from the pedestal of self-righteous egotism upon which he stands.

"Turning again for a moment to the question of probabilities: I ask your Honor if it is probable, even thinkable, that any minister, standing in the position of regard in which this minister stood last Sunday morning before the eyes of his people, would deem a crisis like this insufficient to unseal his lips and absolve him from his confessional vows? His very duty to his God and to his congregation, to the poor dupes of his hypocrisy, to say nothing of his duty to himself, would compel him to go upon the witness stand voluntarily and reveal the name of the alleged thief!

"Such a consideration again forces upon any unbiased mind the conviction that this man is not speaking the truth. View him as a thief, and you suspect that his story is a lie. Try to view him as a minister, acting honestly and in good faith, and you no longer suspect, but you deeply and unalterably know that his story is a lie!"

Searle, now at the height of his self-induced passion, as well as at the climax of his argument, stood bent over, his eyes blazing at the judge, his face red, his neck swollen, his features working in rage, and his voice deepening to a bull-like roar, while with an upper-cut gesture of his clenched fist and right arm, he appeared to lift the words to some mighty height and hurl them like a thunder bolt of doom.

The minister, sitting with every muscle taut, as he strained under the viciousness of this assault, felt just before its climax some insensible cause directing his gaze from the face of his official accuser to that of his real Nemesis, the actress, and was surprised to see her crouching like a tigress for a spring, with eyes fixed upon the prosecutor, and a look of unutterable malice, hate, and loathing in their savage beams.

But with this scene thrown for a moment on the screen of his mind, the suddenly sobering utterance of Searle indicated that he was concluding his argument, and the defendant's eyes returned quickly to the attorney's face.

"For these reasons, your Honor," the man was saying, "so patent and bristling from the testimony that I need not even have spoken of them in order to bring them to your attention, I ask you to find that the offense as charged in the complaint has been committed, and that there is sufficient cause to believe the defendant guilty thereof, and to order that he be held to answer before the Honorable, the Superior Court of the County of Alameda and the State of California."

Searle sat down and wiped his brow,—confident that he had added greatly to his reputation by a masterly argument which had sealed the fate of a man, against whom, despite the minister's suspicions, he really had nothing in the world but that instinct for the chase to which, once a strong nature gives up, it may find itself led on to excesses that are the extreme of injustice.

The audience moved restlessly yet silently, shifting cramped muscles tenderly and rubbing strained eyes; but still alert for the issue of the scene which in one hour and fifty minutes had been played from one climax to another.

"You have the opportunity to reply," said the Court, addressing Hampstead.

"The spirit and the manner of this address is its own reply," answered the defendant quickly, believing hopefully that it was.

But the audience, more discerning than the defendant, issued the last of its long-drawn collective sighs, foreseeing that the drama was now at its inevitable end.

In sharp, machine-like tones, the verdict of Judge Brennan was pronounced:

"Held to answer! Bail doubled! Adjourned!"

The gavel fell sharply, and the eyes of the Court darted a warning glance beyond the rail as if to forestall a possible demonstration of any sort. But there was none. A kind of restraint appeared to hold the court and spectators in thrall. Then the official reporter closed his notebook with an audible whisk; the clerk, gathering his papers, snapped them loudly with rubber bands; and the judge arose and started toward his chambers, while Wyatt moved over and took his place significantly by the side of Hampstead. As if this broke the spell, there was a shuffling of many feet, while the minister was immediately surrounded by his bondsmen and a few friends. The friends pressed his hand and stepped away into the outgoing crowd; but the bondsmen went with him into the judge's chambers, where the new surety was quickly executed. After this, wringing the hand of each of the three men feelingly, Hampstead asked to be excused.

"I have an humiliating experience to undergo," he explained, with a meaningful glance at Detective Larsen who, representing the Bureau of Identification, stood waiting. "I prefer to face that humiliation alone."

"I understand," exclaimed Wilson, his face flushing. "It is a damned outrage! I didn't know such a thing could be done. I thought every man was presumed innocent until proven guilty! Instead of that, they put him in the Rogues' Gallery!"

"You are as innocent as an angel from heaven," averred the white-bearded Wadham extravagantly, as he laid an affectionate hand upon the shoulder of the younger man.

"You are, indeed," echoed Hayes, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I confess again that we doubted for a time, but your character rises triumphant to the test."

The minister was unwilling to trust himself to further speech; for his disappointment with the verdict had been great, and the sympathetic loyalty of these trusted friends made self-control difficult, so with only a nod of comprehension, he turned quickly to where Detective Larsen waited.

It was nearly one hour later when the minister, clothed again, stepped out upon the street. Behind him was his record in the criminal history of the State of California. He had seen his name go into the card index with a wife murderer on one side of him and the author of an unmentionable crime upon the other. With the sickening memory of his loathsome ordeal searing his brain he was only half-conscious of the clatter and bang of the busy city life about him. Mercifully the gaping crowd had dispersed. Hurrying people went this way and that, intent upon their own concerns. But a newsboy, intent, too, on his concerns, thrust the noon edition of The Sentinel before the minister's eyes. Seeking the headline by habit, as the eyes of the victim turn to the torturing irons, he read in letters as black and bold as any he had seen that week, the verdict of Judge Brennan.

"HELD TO ANSWER!"

Instinctively Hampstead paused, like a man in a daze, then passed his hand before his eyes to blot the black letters from his sight. In the identification bureau, the meaning of those three words had just been defined to the most sensitive part of his nature in abhorrent and revolting terms. The sight of that headline to be flaunted on every street corner was like seeing these words, with their loathsome connotation, spread upon a banner that arched over the whole sky of life for him. It overwhelmed him with a sense of the public obloquy to which he was now to be subjected.

On the street car, as he rode homeward, the minister felt the eyes of the people upon him,—curiously he knew, derisively he imagined; yet some were in reality sympathetic. The conductor, as he took the clergyman's nickel, touched his hat respectfully, thus subtly indicating that there was some vestige of religious character still outwardly attaching to his person. And a workman, his tools in his hand and the stain of his craft upon his clothes, leaned over and touched the minister upon the arm.

"My boy was playing the ponies in Beany Webster's place," he said. "You saved him for me. I don't care what else you done; if they ever got me on the jury, there's one would never convict you of anything."

The minister recognized the friendliness of the remark with a cordial smile, and put out his hand to grasp gratefully the soiled one of the toiler. That handclasp was immensely strengthening to him. He felt as if he had taken hold of the great, steadying hand of God.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A PROMISE OF STRENGTH

Late in the afternoon of this day, which, it will be remembered, was Saturday, the minister had three callers in tolerably prompt succession. The first to appear was the Angel of the Chair, hailing the minister with a smile as if, instead of disgrace, he had achieved a triumph.

Hampstead's sad face lighted with sheer joy at her manner. It was such a relief that she had not come to commiserate him. His mood was extremely subtle. It irritated him to be pitied; it stung him to be doubted. He only wanted to be believed and to be encouraged by those who did believe him. This fragile blossom of a woman who, with all her gentleness and weakness, had yet in her breast the battling spirit of the martyrs of old, touched just the right note, as after an interval of sympathetic silence, she asked gently, with a voice full of the tenderest consideration, "Can you—can you see it to the end?"

"To the end?"

Hampstead lifted his brows gravely. "You mean—conviction?"

"Yes," she answered with that simple directness which showed that she was blinking no phase of the question. "Is the issue big enough to require such a sacrifice?"

"Oh, I think it is too improbable it could go to that length," Hampstead answered thoughtfully.

"But it might! Is it worth it?" Mrs. Burbeck persisted.

The calm sincerity of her manner poised the question like a lance aimed at his heart.

Hampstead hesitated. He really had not thought as far as this, any farther in fact than the hateful smudge of the thumb print and the picture in the Gallery of Rogues. But now, with her considerately calculating glances upon him, he did think that far, weighing all his hopes, his work, his position at the head of All People's, his priceless liberty, his fathomless love for Bessie, against the pledged word of a priest to a weak and penitent thief, whose soul at this moment trembled on the brink, suspended alone by the spectacle of the integrity of the confessor to his vow.

He weighed his duty to this thief now somewhat as five years before he had weighed his duty to Dick and Tayna against the supreme ambition of his life. The stakes then, on both sides, large as they had seemed, were infinitely smaller than the values at issue now. Looking back, John knew that then he had not only made the right decision, but the best decision for himself. He thought that he was humbling himself; but instead he had exalted himself.

But now the lines were not so sharply drawn. He was renouncing his very position and power to do his duty.

"Is it?"

Mrs. Burbeck half-looked and half-breathed this gentle reminder that she had asked her pastor a question.

"I believe," said the minister, revealing frankly the trend of his thought, "that the nearest duty is the greatest duty; that the man who spares himself for some great task will never come to a great task. I hold that a man ought to be true in any relation of life; and when the issue is drawn between one duty and another, he should try to determine calmly which is the highest duty and be true to that. I shall try to be that in this case—even to conviction!"

The sheen upon the face of the woman as she listened was as great as the glow upon the face of the man as he spoke.

"That is a very simple religion," Mrs. Burbeck concurred happily, "and it contains the larger fact of all religion. That is why Jesus went to the cross; because he was true. That was why the grave couldn't hold him; because he was true. You cannot bury truth, nor brand it, nor photograph it, nor put its thumb prints in a book, nor put stripes upon it."

Hampstead arose suddenly, enthusiasm kindling like the glow of inspiration upon his face. "That is why I still feel free—unscathed by what has happened," he exclaimed. "In a small and comparatively unimportant way it has been given to me to be true. Yes," he said, sitting down again and speaking very soberly, "I shall be true to the end—conviction, imprisonment even. Prison terms do not last forever; and every day spent there will be a witness to the fact that I am true." Exalted enthusiasm had passed on for a moment to a strained note that sounded like fanatical egotism.

As if to check this Mrs. Burbeck asked quietly but with a significance that was arresting:

"Are you strong enough, do you think?"

For a moment the minister was thoughtful and something like a shudder of apprehension swept over him.

"No," he replied humbly. "I begin to confess it to myself. The fear that I will weaken begins to come to me at times."

"That is good," the Angel of the Chair commented surprisingly, gathering her scarf about her shoulders as she spoke. "It is better to be too weak than to be too strong. But strength will be given you. That is what I came to say. I feel strangely weak myself, to-day, and must be going now."

"You should not have come," reproached the minister, as he helped Mori, the Japanese, to wheel her to the door; "and yet I am so glad you did come, for you have made me feel like some chivalrous champion of eternal right jousting in the lists against an impious Lucifer."

For this the Angel gave him back a smile over the top of her chair, and the minister watched her out of sight, reflecting that in the few days since this strain upon them all began she had failed perceptibly, and recalling that never before had he heard her allude to her weakness or make her physical condition the excuse for anything she did or did not do.

Within a quarter of an hour, so soon almost that it seemed as if he had been waiting for his wife to depart, Elder Burbeck was announced as the second caller at Doctor Hampstead's door.

For the five years of his eldership before the advent of Hampstead, Elder Burbeck had a record in the official board of never permitting any subject to be passed upon without a word from him, nor ever having allowed any question to be considered settled until it was settled according to the dictates of the thing he supposed to be his conscience.

At their first momentary clash on the day when Hampstead, the book agent, had broken open the church which Burbeck had nailed up, the older man thought he sensed in the younger the presence of a spiritual endowment greater than his own. To this the ruling Elder had bowed within himself. Externally, his manner was not changed, nor his leadership affected. To the congregation his submission to the final judgment of the minister was accounted as a virtue. Instead of weakening him, it strengthened his own standing with the membership.

While Burbeck had at times voiced his protests to the pastor at what he felt to be mistaken sentimentalism, and while the protests had been dismissed at times with an unchristian impatience, there was no one to whom the events and disclosures of this terrible week of headlines had been more surprising or more shocking than to the meticulous apostle of the status quo. Upon the Elder's metallic cast of mind each revelation impacted with the shattering effect of a solid shot. Through a thousand crevices thus created, suspicion, rumor, and the stream of truths, half-truths, and lies percolated to the bed of reason. His mind was without elasticity. The school of logic in which he had been trained reasoned coldly, by straight lines to rectangular conclusions. There was no place for allowances or adjustments. Once a stitch was dropped, there was no picking it up, and the blemish was in the garment.

So he reasoned now about Hampstead. The minister, having been weak once, must have also been wicked; being brittle, he must have been broken; frail, he must have been fractured. Having been wicked, broken, fractured, this explained his immense sympathy for and capacity to reach other frail, weak, brittle men and women; but it did not justify his pose as a pillar unscathed by fire. Loving All People's as he loved himself, his wife, his brilliant son,—with pride and self-complacence,—Burbeck felt hot resentment at the disgrace which the disclosures and the flood of scandal brought upon the church.

Searle himself had not believed many of the charges he hurled against Hampstead in his concluding speech. Elder Burbeck, who heard that speech from behind the rail, believed it all. Believing it, and believing in his mission to purge the church of this impostor, his zeal roused him to the point where he forgot to be logical. He believed the preacher was a thief, a liar and a hypocrite; and at the same time believed that he had told the truth upon the witness stand in his own defense. But this only made his sin more heinous. He was harboring some crook—some other man, weak, frail, brittle, wicked as himself. That man was necessarily a hypocrite, a whited sepulcher, posing before the community as a pillar of virtue. It would be an act of righteousness to find and expose that man. But who could it be? Somebody at that supper, of course. Now it might be Haggard, managing editor of The Sentinel; newspaper men were always suspicious characters, anyway; and surely Hampstead was under obligations to Haggard. Haggard, with all his publicity, had given the minister his first fame, and for years supported him upon his pedestal as a public idol. Yes, it probably was Haggard. But whoever it was, Burbeck undertook in his mind a second mission; to find and expose and brand the thief whom the minister was protecting.

With no more fiery fanaticism did the followers of Mohammed set out with the sword to purge the world of infidels than did Elder Burbeck purpose to purge All People's of its pastor and wring from the lips of Hampstead the secret of another's crime.

He entered the minister's study with a pompous dignity that was ominous. His face was as red, the bony protuberances on his boxlike and hairless skull were as prominent, as ever. His shaggy eyebrows lent their usual fierceness to the steel gleam of his blue eye. His close-cropped gray mustache clung perilously above lips that were straight and unsmiling.

"Good evening, Hampstead," he said, with a falling inflection.

This was the first time he had ever failed to say "Brother" Hampstead.

The minister had risen to greet his visitor, but subtly discerning in the first appearance of the man the mood in which he came, had not advanced, but stood with his desk between them, waiting.

"How are you, Burbeck!" the minister replied evenly. This was also the first time he had failed to address the Elder as "Brother." He was rather surprised at himself for omitting it now and took warning therefrom that his feelings were poised upon hair triggers.

The Elder saw in the minister's manner instant confirmation of his conclusions. The man had not the spirit of Christ. He met hard looks with hard looks. This was well. It made the Elder's task the easier. He could proceed at once to business.

In his hand he held a copy of the last edition of The Sentinel, and now he spread the paper across the desk before the clergyman's eye. The same old headline was there, "HELD TO ANSWER," but in the center of the page was a frame or box which contained a half-tone, a smear, and a short column of black-face type, both words and figures.

Hampstead saw at a glance that it was a printed copy of his Bertillon record. The smear was his thumb print; the picture was his picture, a half-tone of the bald, unretouched photograph of himself which had been made for the Gallery of Rogues, and across the bottom of the picture was a suggestive space, in which was printed: "No.——?" The inference sought to be conveyed was clear. So great was the sense of pain which Hampstead felt that it was reflected in the glance he turned upon the Elder, a glance that came as near to an appeal for pity as any that had yet been in the clergyman's eye. But it met no response from the stern old Puritan.

"Be seated!" the minister said, a trifle sadly.

"I can say what I've got to say better if I stand," replied the Elder tersely. "Of course you'll resign!"

A look of intense surprise crossed the face of Hampstead.

"Resign what?" he asked, with raised brows.

"Why, the pulpit of All People's!"

The minister stared in amazement. Burbeck also stared, but in impatience, during an interval of silence in which Hampstead had full opportunity to weigh again the manner of his visitor and appraise its meaning.

"No," the young man replied within a minute, firmly but almost without inflection, "I shall not resign."

"Then," declared Burbeck aggressively, "the pulpit of All People's will be declared vacant." The Elder's chin was raised, and implacable resolution was photographed upon his features.

Again Hampstead paused, and weighed and sounded the really sterling character of this honest old man, whose pride was as inflexible and undeviating as the rule of his moral life. He saw him not as a fanatical vengeance, but as a father. He thought of Rollie, of the man's pride in his son, and of what a crushing blow it would be to him to know the plight in which that son really stood to-day. It brought to him the memory of something he had read somewhere: "The more you do for a man, the easier it is to love him and to forgive him." His feeling now was not of resentment, but of sympathy. He felt very sorry for the Elder and for the position in which he stood.

"Why, Brother Burbeck," he reproached softly, "All People's would not do that. You would not let them do that. When you have stopped to think, you would not let me resign even. If I am convicted by a jury, I should have to resign; but a jury would not convict, I think. Besides, many things can happen before that. My accuser, who knows I am innocent, might relent. It is even more conceivable that a condition might arise under which the thief could speak out, and I should be vindicated."

The upper lip of Burbeck curled till it showed a tooth and then straightened out again. The minister continued to speak:

"To resign now would amount to a confession of guilt. To force me to resign would be an act of treachery. I am guilty of nothing, proven guilty of nothing. I am assailed because of the whimsical caprice of a half-crazed woman. I am temporarily helpless before that assault because I am faithful to my vows as a minister of All People's, vows which I took kneeling, with your hand upon my head. In spirit I am unscathed, as your own observations must show you. If my reputation is wounded, it is a wound sustained in the course of my duty, and it is the part of All People's and every member of it to rally valiantly to my support. If I were not persuaded that they would do this, I should be gravely disheartened."

The manner in which Hampstead spoke was clearly disconcerting to the Elder. He felt again that consciousness of moral superiority before which he had bowed until bowing had become a habit. But now he had more information. Reason stiffened the back of prejudice. He knew that this assumption of the minister was a pose. His conviction was this time strong enough to avert its spell; and he answered unmoved, except to deeper feeling, with still harsher utterance:

"Then Hampstead, you will be disheartened! All People's shall never support you again. I have called a meeting of the official board for to-night. I shall present a resolution declaring the pulpit vacant. If they recommend it, it will be acted upon to-morrow morning by the congregation. If they do not receive it, I shall myself bring it before the congregation."

A look of deepening pain crossed the features of the minister.

"Not to-morrow," he pleaded, his voice choking strangely; "not to-morrow. I have been counting greatly on to-morrow. It has been a hard week. Man!" and Hampstead suddenly arose, "man, have you not heart enough to realize what this has been to me. I long passionately for the privilege of standing again in the pulpit of All People's. I want them to see how undaunted in spirit I am. I want them to judge for themselves the mark of conscious innocence upon my face. I want to feel myself once more under the gaze of a thousand pairs of eyes, every one of which I know is friendly. I want the whole of Oakland to know that my church is solidly behind me; that though in a Court of Justice I am 'Held to Answer', in the Court of the Lord and before the jury of my own church, I stand approved, with the very stigma of official shame recognized as a decoration of honor."

Hampstead had walked around the desk. He lifted his hand in appeal and sought to lay it upon the shoulder of the Elder to express the sympathy and the need of sympathy which he felt.

But Burbeck deliberately moved out of reach, replying sternly and perhaps vindictively:

"Hampstead! You do not appear to appreciate your position. You will never again stand in the pulpit of All People's. That is one sacrilege which you have committed for the last time. More than that, I hold it to be my duty to God to wring from your own lips the secret of the man whom you are shielding, and I shall find a way to do it! I—"

But the man's feeling had overmastered his speech. His body shook, his face was purple with the vehemence of anger. He lifted his hand as if to call down an imprecation when words had failed him, then abruptly turned, unwilling to trust himself to further speech, and made for the outside door. It closed behind him with a bang that left the key rattling in the lock.

Perhaps this noise and the sound of the Elder's clumping, heavy feet as they went down the steps, prevented the minister from hearing the chugging of a motor-car as it was brought to a stop in front.

Elder Burbeck, hurrying directly across the street to relieve his feelings by getting away quickly from what was now a house of detestation, almost ran into the huge black shape drawn up before the curb. He backed away and lunged around the corner of the car too quickly to notice the figure that emerged from it, or his emotions might have been still more hotly stirred.