Mrs. Arnot had looked upon Haldane's degradation with feelings akin to disgust and anger, but as long, sleepless hours passed, her thoughts grew more gentle and compassionate. She was by nature an advocate rather than a judge. Not the spirit of the disciples, that would call down fire from heaven, but the spirit of the Master, who sought to lay his healing, rescuing hand on every lost creature, always controlled her eventually. Human desert did not count as much with her as human need, and her own sorrows had made her heart tender toward the sufferings of others, even though well merited.

The prospect that the handsome youth, the son of her old friend, would cast himself down to perish in the slough of dissipation, was a tragedy that wrung her heart with grief; and when at last she fell asleep it was with tears upon her face.

Forebodings had followed Laura also, even into her dreams, and at last, in a frightful vision, she saw her uncle placing a giant on guard over the house. Her uncle had scarcely disappeared before Haldane tried to escape, but the giant raised his mighty club, as large and heavy as the mast of a ship, and was about to strike when she awoke with a violent start.

In strange unison with her dream she still heard her uncle's voice in the garden below. She sprang to the window, half expecting to see the giant also, nor was she greatly reassured on observing an unknown man posted in the summer-house and left there. Mr. Arnot's mysterious action, and the fact that he was out at that early hour, added to the disquiet of mind which the events of the preceding night had created.

Her simple home-life had hitherto flowed like a placid stream in sunny meadows, but now it seemed as if the stream were entering a forest where dark and ominous shadows were thrown across its surface. She was too womanly to be indifferent to the fate of any human being. At the same time she was still so much of a child, and so ignorant of the world, that Haldane's action, even as she understood it, loomed up before her imagination as something awful and portentous of unknown evils. She was oppressed with a feeling that a crushing blow impended over him. Now, almost as vividly as in her dream, she still saw the giant's club raised high to strike. If it were only in a fairy tale, her sensitive spirit would tremble at such a stroke, but inasmuch as it was falling on one who had avowed passionate love for her, she felt almost as if she must share in its weight. The idea of reciprocating any feeling that resembled his passion had at first been absurd, and now, in view of what he had shown himself capable, seemed impossible; and yet his strongly expressed regard for her created a sort of bond between them in spite of herself. She had realized the night before that he would be immediately dismissed and sent home in disgrace; but her dream, and the glimpse she had caught of her uncle and the observant stranger, who, as she saw, still maintained his position, suggested worse consequences, whose very vagueness made them all the more dreadful.

As it was still a long time before the breakfast hour, she again sought her couch, and after a while fell into a troubled sleep, from which she was awakened by her aunt. Hastily dressing, she joined Mrs. Arnot at a late breakfast, and soon discovered that she was worried and anxious as well as herself.

"Has Mr. Haldane gone out?" she asked.

"Yes; and what perplexes me is that two strangers followed him to the street so rapidly that they almost seemed in pursuit."

Then Laura related what she had seen, and her aunt's face grew pale and somewhat rigid as she recognized the fact that her husband was carrying out some plan, unknown to her, which might involve a cruel blow to her friend, Mrs. Haldane, and an overwhelming disgrace to Egbert Haldane. At the same time the thought flashed upon her that the young man's offence might be graver than she had supposed. But she only remarked quietly:

"I will go down to the office and see your uncle after breakfast."

"Oh, auntie, please let me go with you," said Laura nervously.

"I may wish to see my husband alone," replied Mrs. Arnot doubtfully, foreseeing a possible interview which she would prefer her niece should not witness.

"I will wait for you in the outer office, auntie, if you will only let me go. I am so unstrung that I cannot bear to be left in the house alone."

"Very well, then; we'll go together, and a walk in the open air will do us both good."

As Mrs. Arnot was finishing her breakfast she listlessly took up the morning "Courier," and with a sudden start read the heavy head-lines and paragraph which Pat's unlucky venture as a reporter had occasioned.

"Come, Laura, let us go at once," said she, rising hastily; and as soon as they could prepare themselves for the street they started toward the central part of the city, each too busy with her own thoughts to speak often, and yet each having a grateful consciousness of unspoken sympathy and companionship.

As they passed down the main street they saw a noisy crowd coming up the sidewalk toward them, and they crossed over to avoid it. But the approaching throng grew so large and boisterous that they deemed it prudent to enter the open door of a shop until it passed. Their somewhat elevated position gave them a commanding view, and a policeman's uniform at once indicated that it was an arrest that had drawn together the loose human atoms that are always drifting about the streets. The prisoner was followed by a retinue that might have bowed the head of an old and hardened offender with shame—rude, idle, half-grown boys, with their morbid interest in every thing tending to excitement and crime, seedy loungers drawn away from saloon doors where they are as surely to be found as certain coarse weeds in foul, neglected corners—a ragged, unkempt, repulsive jumble of humanity, that filled the street with gibes, slang, and profanity. Laura was about to retreat into the shop in utter disgust, when her aunt exclaimed in a tone of sharp distress:

"Merciful Heaven! there is Egbert Haldane!"

With something like a shock of terror she recognized her quondam lover, the youth who had stood at her side and turned her music. But as she saw him now there appeared an immeasurable gulf between them; while her pity for him was profound, it seemed as helpless and hopeless in his behalf as if he were a guilty spirit that was being dragged away to final doom.

Her aunt's startled exclamation caught the young man's attention, for it was a voice that he would detect among a thousand, and he turned his livid face, with its agonized, hunted look, directly toward them.

As their eyes met—as he saw the one of all the world that he then most dreaded to meet, Laura Romeyn, regarding him with a pale, frightened face, as if he were a monster, a wild beast, nay, worse, a common thief on his way to jail—he stopped abruptly, and for a second seemed to meditate some desperate act. But when he saw the rabble closing on him, and heard the officers growl in surly tones, "Move on," a sense of helplessness as well as of shame overwhelmed him. He shivered visibly, dashed his hat down over his eyes, and strode on, feeling at last that the obscurity of a prison cell would prove a welcome refuge.

But Mrs. Arnot had recognized the intolerable suffering and humiliation stamped on the young man's features; she had seen the fearful, shrinking gaze at herself and Laura, the lurid gleam of desperation, and read correctly the despairing gesture by which he sought to hide from them, the rabble, and all the world, a countenance from which he already felt that shame had blotted all trace of manhood.

Her face again wore a gray, rigid aspect, as if she had received a wound that touched her heart; and, scarcely waiting for the miscellaneous horde to pass, she took Laura's arm, and said briefly and almost sternly:

"Come."

Mr. Arnot's equanimity was again destined to be disturbed. Until he had commenced to carry out his scheme of striking fear into the hearts of his employes, he had derived much grim satisfaction from its contemplation. But never had a severe and unrelenting policy failed more signally, and a partial consciousness of the fact annoyed him like a constant stinging of nettles which he could not brush aside. When, therefore, his wife entered, he greeted her with his heaviest frown, and a certain twitching of his hands as he fumbled among his papers, which showed that the man who at times seemed composed of equal parts of iron and lead had at last reached a condition of nervous irritability which might result in an explosion of wrath; and yet he made a desperate effort at self-control, for he saw that his wife was in one of those moods which he had learned to regard with a wholesome respect.

"You have sent Haldane to prison," she said calmly. Though her tone was so quiet, there was in it a certain depth and tremble which her husband well understood, but he only answered briefly:

"Yes; he must go there if he finds no bail."

"May I ask why?"

"He robbed me of a thousand dollars."

"Were there no extenuating circumstances?" Mrs. Arnot asked, after a slight start.

"No, but many aggravating ones."

"Did he not come here of his own accord?"

"He could not have done otherwise. I had detectives watching him."

"He could have tried to do otherwise. Did he not offer some explanation?"

"What he said amounted to a confession of the crime."

"What did he say?"

"I have not charged my mind with all the rash, foolish words of the young scapegrace. It is sufficient for me that he and all in my employ received a lesson which they will not soon forget. I wish you would excuse me from further consideration of the subject at present. It has cost me too much time already."

"You are correct," said Mrs. Arnot very quietly. "It is likely to prove a very costly affair. I tremble to think what your lesson may cost this young man, whom you have rendered reckless and desperate by this public disgrace; I tremble to think what this event may cost my friend, his mother. Of the pain it has cost me I will not speak—"

"Madam," interrupted Mr. Arnot harshly, "permit me to say that this is an affair concerning which a sentimental woman can have no correct understanding. I propose to carry on my business in the way which experience has taught me is wise, and, with all respect to yourself, I would suggest that in these matters of business I am in my own province."

The ashen hue deepened upon Mrs. Arnot's face, but she answered quietly:

"I do not wish to overstep the bounds which should justly limit my action and my interest in this matter. You will also do me the justice to remember that I have never interfered in your business, and have rarely asked you about it, though in the world's estimation I would have some right to do so. But if such harshness, if such disastrous cruelty, is necessary to your business, I must withdraw my means from it, for I could not receive money stained, as it were, with blood. But of this hereafter. I will now telegraph Mrs. Haldane to come directly to our house—"

"To our house!" cried Mr. Arnot, perfectly aghast.

"Certainly. Can you suppose that, burdened with this intolerable disgrace, she could endure the publicity of a hotel? I shall next visit Haldane, for as I saw him in the street, with the rabble following, he looked desperate enough to destroy himself."

"Now, I protest against all this weak sentimentality," said Mr. Arnot, rising. "You take sides with a robber against your husband."

"I do not make light of Haldane's offence to you, and certainly shall not to him. But it is his first offence, as far as we know, and, though you have not seen fit to inform me of the circumstances, I cannot believe that he committed a cool, deliberate theft. He could have been made to feel his guilt without being crushed. The very gravity of his wrong action might have awakened him to his danger, and have been the turning-point of his life. He should have had at least one chance—God gives us many."

"Well, well," said Mr. Arnot impatiently, "let his mother return the money, and I will not prosecute. But why need Mrs. Haldane come to Hillaton? All can be arranged by her lawyer."

"You know little of a mother's feelings if you can suppose she will not come instantly."

"Well, then, when the money is paid she can take him home, that is, after the forms of law are complied with."

"But he must remain in prison till the money is paid?"

"Certainly."

"You intimated that if any one went bail for him he need not go to prison. I will become his security."

"O nonsense! I might as well give bail myself."

"Has he reached the prison yet?"

"I suppose he has," replied Mr. Arnot, taking care to give no hint of the preliminary examination, for it would have annoyed him excessively to have his wife appear at a police court almost in the light of an antagonist to himself. And yet his stubborn pride would not permit him to yield, and carry out with considerate delicacy the merciful policy upon which he saw she was bent.

"Good-morning," said his wife very quietly, and she at once left her husband's private room. Laura rose from her chair in the outer office and welcomed her gladly, for, in her nervous trepidation, the minutes had seemed like hours. Mrs. Arnot went to a telegraph office, and sent the following despatch to Mrs. Haldane:

"Come to my house at once. Your son is well, but has met with misfortune."

She then, with Laura, returned immediately home and ordered her carriage for a visit to the prison. She also remembered with provident care that the young man could not have tasted food that morning.