Meanwhile outside in the waiting-room, Lawrence Challoner walked dismally to and fro. For, notwithstanding, that in the last hour a great joy had come to him, this room had awakened memories of that other occasion, when, likewise, waiting for Murgatroyd, his life had hung in the balance. A wave of pity took possession of him—pity for himself for his then mistaken views of life, pity for the little wife, who had stood so nobly by him; and, suddenly, he quickened his steps, as if impatient for the time to come when he could make amends for the great wrong he had done her. In a measure, entering into his thoughts, though her own were somewhat complex, Shirley Bloodgood, from where she sat in a far corner of the room, also waited nervously for the door to open. And it was thus that Miriam Challoner came upon them, her eyes glistening, a happy smile on her face.

"Laurie, Shirley," she stammered, "Mr. Murgatroyd says—no, come, he'll tell you himself." And taking their willing hands into hers, she led them back into the prosecutor's private office, from which they had been so unceremoniously evicted a little while before.

Miriam Challoner's intimation that good news would be forthcoming was indeed rather vague; nevertheless, unconsciously, both were affected by her mood, and came into the room, smiling. Perhaps it affected Murgatroyd, too, for it was with his most genial manner that the hitherto imperturbable prosecutor, from where he sat on the edge of the table, his arms folded, singled out Shirley, and said:—

"Ready for the lynching, Miss Bloodgood?"

A look of surprise crossed Shirley's features, but she scorned to answer.

Murgatroyd was now standing, his back still to the table.

"Would you mind locking that door," he called to Challoner; and turning to the ladies: "Mrs. Challoner, take that chair, please," pointing to one nearest to him, "and, Miss Bloodgood, that," indicating one next to Miriam's.

Meantime, Challoner had returned, and was waiting, hesitatingly, near the door.

"Aren't you going to join the family circle, Laurie?" the prosecutor said lightly.

Challoner then came forward, and placed his chair between the two women.

Murgatroyd's manner suddenly became chilly, stern, in short, once more he was the prosecutor of the pleas. Addressing Challoner, whom he looked well in the eye, he began:—

"Mrs. Challoner has asked me to go on a hundred thousand dollar construction-bond for you; also, to loan you considerable money."

There was a dramatic pause. And except for a questioning glance from Challoner and Shirley, which found a ready answer in the eyes of Miriam, his listeners did not move nor speak.

"There it is," announced Murgatroyd, in the same business-like tone; and stepping aside from the table, revealed two old, battered, dust-covered, sheet-iron boxes.

"Those boxes!" exclaimed Mrs. Challoner, who was visibly excited. "What is in them?" she asked in bewilderment.

"I don't know," returned Murgatroyd calmly.

There was no question in the minds of the prosecutor's visitors but that these boxes were the same that Miriam had brought to him so long ago, filled with negotiable securities, to the extent,—as Miriam was not likely to forget,—of eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars; but, as to their present contents, all, naturally, were at a loss to conjecture. So, no one spoke, but continued to wait expectantly for Murgatroyd to make the next move. Apparently, however, that was far from his intention, and after a moment Shirley broke out with:—

"Do you mean to say that you don't know what is in them?"

"Miss Bloodgood, there's only one person in this room who knows that," he replied quietly. Then turning to Mrs. Challoner, he went on in the same tone:—

"Do you see these seals?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Unbroken, are they not?"

"Yes," again she assented faintly.

"Well, then, you know what is inside of them; I do not."

"I?—" faltered Miriam. "Why——"

Then followed a moment of racking suspense for all, except, perhaps, Murgatroyd.

"Mrs. Challoner," he resumed, "you told me once that there were eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars in negotiable securities in these boxes. If what you then said was true, there they are, coupons and all."

"But, Mr. Murgatroyd," protested Mrs. Challoner, "you said that you did not have any money...."

Murgatroyd smiled.

"I spoke the truth. But you...." And now, to Challoner's great surprise, Murgatroyd fixed his eyes on him, and said in a voice that impressed them all the more, inasmuch as it was filled with a kindly confidence rather than with distrust:—

"There's eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars in those boxes, Challoner, belonging to your wife. Can you stand having it back again?"

Challoner looked puzzled; for as Miriam had told Shirley, he had had no reason to believe that his wife's fortune had not all been spent by them. Slowly he began to understand, but he was too overcome to speak. Presently he found his voice and said:—

"Can I stand——"

"Yes," interrupted Murgatroyd, "you know what money did for you before—what it led to—" He broke off abruptly, and turning to Shirley he added: "I told you once, Miss Bloodgood, that there was but one way to cure a bad millionaire, but one way to reform him, and that was to take away his millions. Well, I took away his!"

All eyes now rested on Challoner, who, oblivious to his surroundings, seemed lost in thought,—and who can tell what dreams may come to one suddenly lifted from the depths of poverty back again to affluence. But in any event, looking the prosecutor straight in the face he said in an easy, determined voice:—

"Billy Murgatroyd, a little while ago you asked whether I could stand having all this again; the past five years of my life is my answer to that."

This reply brought to his wife's face a look of pride, and unconsciously she straightened up in her chair; while Shirley sighed perceptibly.

"Laurie," went on Murgatroyd, still probing, but not unkindly, "what are you going to do with all this money?"

"You'll have to ask Miriam about that," he returned quickly; and then with a charming smile, he added: "I have learned that a man's mission is to make money, and a woman's...."

Suddenly, Challoner grew thoughtful again.

"To think of the time," he said, half-aloud, "that it took Miriam and me to save five hundred dollars!"

"That five hundred that you saved," commented Murgatroyd solemnly, "is worth more to you than all this eight hundred and sixty thousand."

"There's no mistake about that either, Murgatroyd," spoke up Challoner promptly; but bending over his wife, he added with a fascinating smile:—

"Miriam, you're going to let me build that hospital, aren't you?"

Simultaneously with Miriam's monosyllabic answer, Murgatroyd glanced at Challoner sharply, not forgetting, quite naturally, how easy in the past it had been for the husband to get whatever he wanted from his wife; his doubts, however, were only momentary, for presently he pushed the boxes toward them, saying:—

"There it is—it all belongs to you."

But in all this Shirley had been strangely silent.

"Mr. Murgatroyd," she now said icily, "do you mean to tell us that your only motive in taking this money was to save Mr. Challoner?"

Murgatroyd took a few steps toward her and regarded her coolly.

"No—and you alone were right. I was bribed—I was corrupt—I was a thief."

"No, no," cried out Shirley, relenting.

"Yes," he went on mercilessly, "it is true. It was my ambition that did it. Besides, I was tempted by a woman——"

"A woman——" faltered the girl.

"Like Adam, I'm blaming it on Eve. This woman wanted me to be, well, really great——"

"You——"

"Yes," he persisted, "I was bribed. I took the money. Oh, you don't know about me! You don't know what I was five years ago! It seemed to me then that money was the only thing that could make me really great. I knelt at the shrine of money—loved it as a dipsomaniac loves his bottle."

He paused; then he continued in a low voice:—

"Yes, I took money to acquit Challoner, and then I convicted him. Why? Because the instinct within me to do my duty was too strong to allow me to do otherwise. All the evidence was against him; he had confessed; I had to convict him."

"And the money—" ventured Shirley.

"Like a dipsomaniac,—a reformed dipsomaniac,—I put that money as he might have his bottle, on the shelf—corked. There it was—I could have it any time I wanted it." His face became more serious as he proceeded: "Then I kept on being a thief, for there was a new and overpowering motive that got the best of me. Like the reformed dipsomaniac I was determined to see what I could do without it. It became a passion with me. I knew that every move I made meant the expenditure of money. A hundred times, yes, a thousand times I have had my fingers on those seals about to break them, and then have crawled away—once more to do without the money. Somehow, I knew, that my time must come. Besides, there was that overwhelming ambition,—prompted by a woman."

Shirley hung her head.

"Yes," he went on fiercely, "a woman who must have her due; it was up to me to be something more than merely honest. Anybody could be honest, she told me, but not everybody could be great!"

Shirley ventured to look up at him, but meeting his gaze fixed on her face, she shifted her eyes instantly.

"Then there was the United States senatorship,—the fairest office in the State,—which I knew I could buy with the money for which I had sold my soul. Again and again I came into this office and went to that vault there, determined to break the seals of the covers on those boxes—to buy the United States senatorship. But I could not bring myself to do it. Something always said to me: 'YOU MUST DO WITHOUT IT! YOU MUST BE HONEST! YOU MUST MAKE A CLEAN FIGHT!' Yet, still, I was a thief: holding thousands that didn't belong to me. But always upon me was that all-absorbing passion,—a passion, not to use, but to do without the thing which was at my finger's ends,—an incentive without which I could not succeed. And so," he concluded, "I went in and won without it."

A tense silence followed the prosecutor's amazingly frank revelation of his temptation and the success which he extorted from it. Unconsciously, he assumed an attitude which it would not be unfair to describe as a defensive one, in readiness, as it were, for any possible strictures on his conduct. Nothing of the sort, however, was forthcoming. On the contrary, at least, as far as Mrs. Challoner was concerned, at no time, not even when his self-arraignment had been the most severe, had his terrible words succeeded in driving the happy light from her eyes. There were moments, it is true, when a dull pallour had spread over her features, a pallour, however, caused solely by sudden stings of agonising memories, and those soft brown eyes had been raised to his questioningly; but his personality had ever been more or less baffling and mysterious to her; and so, whether semi-fascinated or not, they left him thoroughly satisfied with their scrutiny.

Probably better than any one present, Challoner realised to the full what Murgatroyd had suffered. Manlike, however, he was more than willing to permit the great work that Murgatroyd had done to overshadow completely his questionable proceedings. Of course, Challoner was quite well aware that the prosecutor's actions viewed in the light of a successful campaign wore an entirely different aspect than they would had he failed to obtain the senatorship. In the latter case it was inevitable, no matter what moral satisfaction he could derive from the return of the money,—and in fairness to Challoner be it said that he never once questioned it,—that in addition to the humiliation of a ruined career, the prosecutor would have to endure the mortification of knowing that his loss of self-respect was wholly futile. But in any event, Challoner was too generous not to accept without reservation Murgatroyd's contention that, at least in part, he was actuated by a praiseworthy desire to save his wife and him from the results of his dissipations. To a man, such as Challoner now was, it can easily be imagined, therefore, that he would regard that alone as sufficient reason to overlook everything else, and so rising, he grabbed impulsively Murgatroyd's hand, saying:—

"Not another word, old man! It's all right!"

Murgatroyd was visibly affected.

"Thank you," he said simply; and then added: "Only one thing more remains to be done. Mrs. Challoner, I must ask you to break these seals."

Miriam demurred.

"Oh, no, Mr. Murgatroyd!" she said. "Surely you must know that I believe you!"

But Murgatroyd insisted; and obeying him finally, Miriam broke the seals, and presently she showed to them the securities, undisturbed, just as Murgatroyd had taken them, dollar for dollar, bond and bond.

Suddenly Murgatroyd felt a touch on the arm.

"And I believe you, Billy," said Shirley contritely.

An enigmatical smile passed across the prosecutor's face.

"Do you, indeed?" he said dryly; and added: "That's, perhaps, more than I had any right to expect."

A slight pucker showed on Miss Bloodgood's beautiful brow, but she replied, quite unruffled:—

"Why, of course, I do. After all, you were honest, weren't you?" And not waiting for his answer, added ingenuously: "You were not a thief!"

Instantly the expression on Murgatroyd's face became a very serious one.

"Yes, I was," he protested, "I was a thief." And with that he turned to Challoner and said in a voice of great feeling: "Challoner, this money is your wife's. Take it. And great God, man," he groaned, "don't, don't forget what it did to you—what it made you, years ago."

Mrs. Challoner shivered at the prosecutor's earnestness; but Challoner, hesitating for a moment only, advanced and said:—

"We'll take it. I'm not a bit afraid now, Murgatroyd—for I know." And then holding out his hand, he continued kindly: "Billy, if you hadn't taken it—where would I have been to-day?"

"Free—free as you are now," said the other man in a low, strained tone.

"Yes," assented Challoner, "out of prison, but——"

Mrs. Challoner quickly rose and put an end to the conversation going on between the men.

"Come, Laurie," she said abruptly; and holding out her hand, "good-bye, Mr. Murgatroyd! I'm afraid we have taken up altogether too much of your time."

Murgatroyd shook hands with the Challoners; but on Shirley making her adieus, he said:—

"May I have a moment with you, Miss Bloodgood? Won't you wait, please?"

Mrs. Challoner answered for the girl:—

"Shirley, don't be in any hurry. Laurie and I will wait for you in the ante-room—" And as they passed out Challoner called: "Wait until you see that concrete hospital, Murgatroyd!"

For moments that seemed hours Shirley and Murgatroyd stood facing each other, neither having the courage to speak, the girl filled with shame at the great wrong she had done to the man she loved; while he, feeling as if the burden that had rested upon his soul had at last rolled away, was drawing deep breaths—breathing like a man who has suddenly come out of darkness into the daylight. Shirley was the first to break the silence; and now looking up at Murgatroyd, with a little shake of the head she asked:—

"Billy, do you care to know what I think of you?"

"Perhaps, if I had cared less, I——"

But not for a moment would Shirley listen now to his censuring himself further, and quickly she cut him off.

"I think it was a far finer thing to take the money and not touch it," she declared with true feminine logic, "than never to have taken it at all."

"But what if this habit should grow upon me," he retorted smilingly. "Evidently Miss Bloodgood doesn't know what graft awaits me in Washington?"

Shirley laughed softly.

"To think that you accomplished all this without money," she said happily.

"But the worst is yet to come," he observed quickly. "It means that one has to keep up the social game, the club game, the political game, and the Lord knows what other games on five thousand—or is it now seventy-five hundred a year? It means that an unmarried man must starve; and Heaven help the married senator! For he and his family must live on a back street in the capital and freeze. That's what it means to a senator who lives on his salary."

"But doesn't poverty always travel hand in hand with greatness," she remarked enthusiastically, and with superb disdain for anything that she may have said heretofore to the contrary.

Murgatroyd looked at her with admiration. Never before had her eyes seemed to him so blue and so lovely.

"There's one thing—one thing that I didn't tell Challoner and his wife," he said, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. "Can you guess what that something was that always made me keep my hands off those iron boxes?"

Shirley lifted her eyes to his in quick understanding.

"It was my love for the woman who wanted me to be great," he went on in a voice so shaken with emotion, that she scarcely recognised it as belonging to him. "That was the motive that beat down all others."

"And will you forgive the foolish lips that told you to go wrong?"

For answer he held out his arms to her and she came to them. Then he stooped down, and catching her face between his hands, raised it slowly, and kissed the lips tenderly, murmuring lovingly:—

"Her soul would not let me go wrong."

After a moment Shirley slowly drew herself out of his arms and placing a hand on each of his shoulders, asked laughingly, looking deep into his eyes:—

"And we'll go to Washington?"

"Yes, dear," he smiled back. "We're going to Washington—to freeze and starve together on that back street—Yes, my revenge is now complete."

Before he could kiss her a second time, Shirley darted to the door, opened it and called:—

"Miriam, Laurie, come here—come back!"

One look at the face of the girl that she had left in the office was sufficient to tell Miriam that she had great news to communicate. Nevertheless, she asked innocently:—

"What for, my dear? Are you going to lynch him?"

Blushing furiously, Shirley waved her hand at the boxes on the table and said:—

"Billy says that you've gone off and forgotten all your money!"

THE END