It was after midnight; and at Mrs. Tilney's the household, at this hour usually plunged in slumber, had awakened to a hushed, subdued activity. Mr. Mapleson was dying.

It was about ten when Varick first had noted a change in him. For two hours Mr. Mapleson had lain among the pillows, his face passive, peaceful with a smile, and Varick had thought he slept. Then, as he looked up from the book he had brought to keep him company, he had seen Mr. Mapleson's eyelids flutter. His lips, too, moved as if he spoke.

"Anything I can get you?" asked Varick.

Mr. Mapleson did not appear to hear him. He seemed to be looking at something in the distance, and again his lips parted. Putting down his book, Varick bent over him.

"What is it, Mr. Mapleson?"

From a long way off came the little man's voice: "Keep step, John Mapleson. Keep step!"

Varick was puzzled. He laid a hand on Mr. Mapy's shoulder, and the little man quivered as if he had been struck.

"Mr. Mapleson!" said Varick. "What is it?"

The slight figure on the bed stirred restlessly.

"Yes, that's me, John Mapleson, number 556, sir. Keeping step, ain't I? One, two! One, two!" Again he moved slightly.

Then Varick understood. In his dream, whatever it was, John Mapleson lived over again his life in prison. And Varick now realized, too, that he would not live it over very much longer. He gave the little man one more glance, then went hurrying down the stairs to Mrs. Tilney's door. The doctor had come immediately. One look at Mr. Mapleson told him the story, and in haste a nurse was summoned. Before midnight she was installed—a young, pleasant-faced girl, pretty in her crisp blue gingham dress and white cap and apron.

For two hours now Mrs. Tilney had been running up and down the stairs to Mr. Mapleson's door. She did not enter, however, until she had made sure the nurse had all she needed. Then she came in quietly and, with both hands resting on the foot piece of the little man's bed, Mrs. Tilney looked down at him. He was still unconscious. Varick, after a single glance at her, turned away.

"Good-by, John," said Mrs. Tilney and that was all. The words came from her like a croak. One had only to glance at the gaunt, unlovely face to read in it all that went with that farewell. Godspeed she gave Mr. Mapleson, and God, one can be very sure, heard her. Varick followed her into the hall.

"Just what did that woman say—the one that came to the telephone?" he asked.

A single tear, the solitary expression of her feeling, stood in Mrs. Tilney's eye, and as she answered him she dried it with a corner of her sleeve.

"A servant answered," she replied—"a woman. What she said was that Bab couldn't come to the phone."

"Couldn't?" echoed Varick. "Do you think she really got the message?"

"I don't know," Mrs. Tilney answered. She gazed at Varick fixedly through her spectacles, then, as if she guessed the question in his mind, she added: "If Bab got that message Bab will come."

Varick did not venture to reply. He knew the circumstances, he thought. Bab, almost a Beeston now, would stick to Beeston's bargain.

"She'll come," said Mrs. Tilney doggedly.

She turned toward the stairs, her shoulders drooping, her slippered feet slipslopping a muffled tattoo along the thinly carpeted hall. Just as she reached the stairhead she turned.

"If John Mapleson wants me," said Mrs. Tilney, "send down to the kitchen, Mr. Varick. I'm going down there to wait. If she comes I mean to be on hand to let her in."

Jessup was the next to climb the stairs. At Varick's behest the bookkeeper had gone to the drugstore near by on the Avenue for the things the nurse had wanted. Jessup, as he handed the package through the door, beckoned Varick into the hall.

"What do you think, Mr. Varick?" With a jerk of his thumb he indicated the street outside. "They're back again, those two fellows," he said; "they're watching from a doorway across the street."

Varick frowned. It was the detectives whom Jessup meant, he knew. Why Beeston should send them now to watch John Mapleson, Varick could not guess. Was Mapleson, after all, to be sent to prison? Varick smiled. If so, Beeston came too late. He said this to Jessup.

"Yes, that's right," the latter assented. "Any news from her yet?" he asked then.

"No news."

Jessup's only response was a grunt He had his own opinion of the affair. Mr. Mapleson, having risked everything for Bab, must bear now the brunt of it, dying dishonored and alone. Naturally Bab would not come. She was a Beeston now.

Time after that passed on laggard feet with Varick. Midnight had struck, and under the coverlid the small figure of Mr. Mapleson lay very still. Since that moment when he'd lived over once more his life in prison he had not spoken. Varick had remained with him. After Jessup went he stood beside the bed, looking down at the little man who lay upon it. The small, peaked face looked somehow peaceful. It seemed as if Mr. Mapleson had already suffered himself to rest.

"He's going very fast," said the young nurse quietly. "He must have been wasting away a long while now."

Varick did not respond. A quick change, as fleeting as the blur of breath on a mirror, had crept all at once into Mr. Mapleson's expression. He strove as if to raise his head. Then Varick saw his lips faintly flutter. He bent over him. Manifestly the little man had something to say.

"What is it, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked.

The sick man's eyes still lay closed, but again the lips fluttered. His face was rapt.

"Spell cat—c-a-t," said Mr. Mapleson; and then: "Diamonds and pearls, Babbie! If you're going to be a lady Mr. Mapy must teach you to spell!" He smiled weakly.

The nurse looked at Varick inquiringly. Varick laid a finger on his lips.

"Oh, see the ox!" continued Mr. Mapleson. "Do you see the ox?"

Just then the door opened and Varick's heart leaped, filled in an instant to brimming with a passionate thankfulness and relief. Bab stood there. One instant she gazed at the picture before her. The next she was on her knees beside the bed. Varick signaled silently to the nurse to follow him into the hall.

It was daylight when the lamp burned out. As the pink dawn of that bright June morning came lifting over the city roofs John Mapleson's soul was led from its cell, and for his crimes and misdemeanors was arraigned before that higher court—the final judgment seat. No need for him to plead "Guilty, my Lord!" for his crimes and misdemeanors were already known. And who can doubt that it was a lenient Judge he faced.

The light was rising, and the shrill sparrows under the eaves had begun to twitter volubly with the day when Bab came out into the hall and closed the door behind her. She had just crossed Mr. Mapy's pipelike arms upon his breast, but she did not weep. Instead, a smile like the morning hovered dreamily on her face. Her hand on the knob, she stood for a moment, then opened the door again.

"Good-by, dear!" she whispered. That was her parting with Mr. Mapleson.

Seeing Varick waiting in the hall, she went toward him unfaltering.

"Bayard!" she said. "Oh, Bayard!"

The next instant, his conscience dumb, all his good resolutions forgotten, Varick had her in his arms—was holding her to him.

"Bab, dearest!" he said.

Her eyes, through the mist that dimmed them, shone up at him like stars.

"You thought I'd come, didn't you?" she said. "You knew, didn't you, I'd never marry for money?"

Varick tried to reassure her.

"No, no, I want you to hear!" she said. "Don't you understand? I had to come!"

"Yes, I know," he murmured. "I knew you'd come if they'd let you."

"Oh, but you don't understand!" Bab protested. "That isn't it! I got to thinking of it all. I thought of you, and I knew what you'd think of me. I couldn't stand it any more. I had to see you and tell you, Bayard. I didn't know Mr. Mapy was dying and I was coming to get him. Then he and I were going away."

The cloud of wonder in Varick's eyes gave way to a sudden light.

"You mean you've given up David then? That you're not going to marry him?"

"Why, no!" said Bab. "That's why I ran away."

It was Lena, the waitress, disheveled and unkempt, who brought the situation to a climax.

"Oh, excuse me!" she exclaimed in conscious confusion at the tableau before her.

"What is it?" asked Varick.

"There'll be a couple of gentlemen in the parlor, sir," answered the blushing Lena. "They're asking for you."

At once Varick guessed who those callers were. He signaled Lena to silence and, opening the door of his room, gently pushed Bab inside. When he had closed the door again he turned to the astonished waitress.

"Who are they, Lena?" he asked, and Lena told him.

The men waiting downstairs were Beeston and David Lloyd.