Old Simon was very calm and firm. He knew his ground, and knew that he could afford to be domineering. His long experience in sharp practice had not failed to teach him that the man who holds his temper, in a contest like this, always has the best of it. And he was too shrewd not to see that his listener was laboring under an excitement that was liable at any moment to break forth in passionate speech. He was, therefore, not surprised nor greatly disturbed when Burnham exclaimed, vehemently:-- "I'll have you arrested, sir! I'll force you to disclose your secret! I'll have you punished by the hand of the law!" "The hand of the law is not laid in punishment on people who are guilty of no crime," responded Craft, coolly; "and there is no criminal charge that you can fairly bring against me. Poverty is my worst crime. I have done nothing except for your benefit. Now, Mr. Burnham you are excited. Calm yourself and listen to reason. Don't you see that if I were to give those things to you I would be putting out of my hands the best evidence I have of the truth of my assertions?" "But I have seen you produce them. I will not deny that you gave them to me." "Ah! very good; but you may die before night! What then?" "Die before night! Absurd! But keep the things; keep them. I can do without them if you will restore the child himself to me. When did you say you would bring him?" "Friday afternoon." "Until Friday afternoon, then, I wait." "Very well, sir; good day!" "Good day!" The old man picked up his cane, rose slowly from his chair, and, with his satchel in his hand, walked softly out, closing the door carefully behind him. Robert Burnham continued his walk up and down the room, his flushed face showing alternately the signs of the hope and the doubt that were striving for the mastery within him. For eight years he had believed his boy to be dead. The terrible wreck at Cherry Brook had yielded up to him from its ashes only a few formless trinkets of all that had once been his child's, only a few unrecognizable bones, to be interred, long afterward, where flowers might bloom above them. The last search had been made, the last clew followed, the last resources of wealth and skill were at an end, and these, these bones and trinkets were all that could be found. Still, the fact of the child's death had not been established beyond all question, and among the millions of remote possibilities that this world always holds in reserve lingered yet the one that he might after all be living. And now came this old man with his strange story, and the cap and the cloak and the locket. Did it mean simply a renewal of the old hope, destined to fade away again into a hopelessness duller than the last?