He, too, often remembered that waxen face, with its great mournful eyes, in the still hours of the night; but that now was not the saddest of his troubles. “You are right, sir,” Tom went on, with a strange mixture of humility and defiance; “but I had three or four fat jobs on hand just at that time, and I knew that if John Loker’s confession got abroad, there’d be no more work for me in the United States. I was going to crack a safe that very night, and had all my tools about me; so, as soon as you took the young lady off, I set to work, picked the locks, and we took to our heels with all the speed we had. You hadn’t made much noise about the affair, so when madam and I walked out of the private entrance together, no one suspected us, and we got off scot-free. I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to be seen around there after that, so I made for a steamer that was just ready to start out, and came over here to try my luck, never dreaming I’d fall into _your_ clutches a second time.” “Have you been at this kind of thing long?” Earle asked. “Nigh on to twenty years. I got in with a gang when I was a youngster, learned all the tricks of the trade, and have lived by my wits and a burglar’s kit ever since.” “Have you, as a rule, found it a very _satisfactory_ kind of business?” his listener asked, pointedly. Tom Drake flushed a vivid crimson, and for an instant a fierce gleam of anger shot from his eye; then he burst out vehemently: “_No, sir; I haven’t._ I’ve always had to hide and sneak about like a whipped cur. It’s all up with me now, though, and I might as well own to it first as last, and there’s no comfort in it from beginning to end; but when a fellow once gets started in it, there don’t seem to be any place to stop, however bad you may want to. I’d got kind of hardened to it, though, until—until that job at Dalton’s that _you_ got hauled up for. I’ve cursed myself times without number for that affair, but I hadn’t the grit to own up and take my chances; though, if I did put on a bold front, every hair on my head stood on end when I saw you stand up so proud and calm, and take the sentence and never squeal.” Tom was getting excited over the remembrance, and his whole frame shook, while Earle could see the perspiration that had gathered on his upper lip. His eyes were bent upon his hands, which were trembling with nervousness, or some other emotion, and his voice was not quite steady.