the young lady urged. "Perhaps he isn't guilty, after all. I am sure he doesn't look it."'

"Why, Sarah!" the old gentleman gasped in astonishment. "You said this morning at breakfast that you were sure he had stolen it."

Here the detective put in his oar.

"I know him and the one that was with him—they're old sneaks, your Honor."

"That's a lie!" I said, finding my tongue at last.

"Good!" the judge exclaimed appreciatively. "I am inclined to think so, too, Edward," he went on, adjusting his diamond circlet with one finger. "This young lady thinks you have a story of your own. Have you?"

"Yes, I have, and a straight one," I answered, plucking up my courage.

"Of course," he grunted sarcastically. "Well, let's have it, but make it short."

It did sound rather lame when I came to tell what I had done with myself since I had entered the city. When I got to that part about the house where Ed and I had been disturbed by thieves, the old gentleman broke in:—

"Bless my soul! That must be the Wordens' house. The officer said there were two suspicious characters who ran away up the boulevard. This fellow must be one of them. Of course he took the purse! You know the Wordens, don't you, Judge?"

His Honor merely nodded to the old gentleman, smiled at the young lady, and said to me:—

"Go on, young man! Tell us why you left home in the first place."

I got red all over again at this invitation, and was taken with a new panic.

"Who are your folks? What's the name of the place?" the judge asked encouragingly.

"Jasonville, Indiana."

"What's the matter with Jasonville, Edward?" he asked more sharply. "Why do you blush for it?"

"I had rather not tell with all these folks around," I answered, looking at the young lady.

His Honor must have found something in my case a little out of his ordinary experience, for he took me back into his own room. He got me started on my story, and one thing led to another. His manner changed all of a sudden: he no longer tried to be smart, and he seemed to have plenty of time. After that long night in the jail I wanted to talk. So I told his Honor just how it had been with me from the beginning.

CHAPTER III

JASONVILLE, INDIANA

The Harringtons—The village magnate—A young hoodlum—On the road to school—The first woman—Disgrace, and a girl's will—An unfortunate coincidence—In trouble again—May loses faith—The end of Jasonville—Discharged—A loan—Charity—The positive young lady hopes I shall start right—The lake front once more—I preach myself a good sermon

The Harringtons were pretty well known in Greene County, Indiana. Father moved to Jasonville just after the war, when the place was not much more than a cross-roads with a prospect of a railroad sometime. Ours was the first brick house, built after the kind he and mother used to know back in York State. And he set up the largest general store in that district and made money. Then he lost most of it when the oil boom first came.

Mother and he set great store by education,—if father hadn't gone to the war he wouldn't have been keeping a country store,—and they helped start the first township high school in our part of the state. And he sent Will, my older brother, and me to the Methodist school at Eureka, which was the best he could do for us. There wasn't much learning to be had in Eureka "College," however; the two or three old preachers and women who composed the faculty were too busy trying to keep the boys from playing cards and smoking or chewing to teach us much.

Perhaps I was a bit of a hoodlum as a boy, anyway. The trouble started with the judge—Judge Sorrell. He was a local light, who held a mortgage on 'most everything in town (including our store—after father went into oil). We boys had always heard at home how hard and mean the judge was, and dishonest, too; for in some of the oil deals he had tricked folks out of their property. It wasn't so strange, then, that we youngsters took liberties with the judge's belongings that the older folks did not dare to. The judge's fine stock used to come in from the field done up, raced to death, and the orchard by the creek just out of town (which had belonged to us once) rarely brought a good crop to maturity. We made ourselves believe that the judge didn't really own it, and treated him as a trespasser. So one night, when the judge made a hasty visit to our house after one of the "raids," my father found me in bed with a wet suit of clothes on, which I had been forced to sacrifice in the creek. The end of that lark was that father had to pay a good sum for my private interpretation of the laws of property, and I spent the rest of the summer on a farm doing a man's work.

Perhaps if it hadn't been for that ducking in the river and what followed, I might have come out just a plain thief. While I was sweating on that farm I saw the folly of running against common notions about property. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted what my neighbor considered to be his, I must get the law to do the business for me. For the first time it dawned on me how wonderful is that system which shuts up one man in jail for taking a few dollars' worth of truck that doesn't belong to him, and honors the man who steals his millions—if he robs in the legal way! Yes, the old judge knocked some good worldly sense into me.

(Nevertheless, old Sorrell needn't have hounded me after I came back to Jasonville, and carried his malice to the point of keeping me from getting a job when I was hoping to make a fair start so that I could ask May Rudge to marry me. But all that was some time later.)

May was one of that handful of young women who in those days stood being sneered at for wanting to go to college with their brothers. We were in the same classes at Eureka two years before I noticed her much. She was little and pale and delicate—with serious, cold gray eyes, and a mouth that was always laughing at you. I can see to-day the very spot where she stood when I first spoke to her. Good weather I used to drive over from father's to Eureka, and one spring morning I happened to drive by the Rudge farm on my way to school instead of taking the pike, which was shorter. There was a long level stretch of road straightaway between two pieces of green meadow, and there, ahead of me, I saw the girl, walking steadily, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I slowed up with the idea that she might give me a nod or a word; but she kept her pace as though she were thinking of things too far off to notice a horse and buggy on the road. Somehow I wanted to make her speak. Pretty soon I said:—

"Won't you ride to school with me, Miss May?"

Then she turned her head, not the least flustered like other girls, and looked me square in the eye for a minute. I knew she was wondering what made me speak to her then, for the boys at school never took notice of the college girls. But she got into the buggy and sat prim and solemn by my side. We jogged along between the meadows, which were bright with flowers and the soft, green grass of spring. The big timber along the roadside and between the pasture lands had just leaved out, and the long branches hung daintily in the misty morning air. All of a sudden I felt mighty happy to be there with her. I think her first words were,—"Do you come this way often?"

"Perhaps I shall be coming this way oftener now," I made bold to answer.

Her lips trembled in a little ironical smile, and the least bit of red sprang into her white face. I said,