Mr. Van Ostend closed the door; came back to the hearth; stood there, his arms folded tightly over his chest, his head bowed. For a few minutes neither man spoke. When the clock on the mantel chimed a quarter to nine, Father Honore made a movement to go. Mr. Van Ostend turned quickly to him and put out a detaining hand. "May I ask if you are going to continue the search this evening; it's a bad night." "Yes; I've had the feeling that, after he has been so long in hiding, he'll have to come out--he must be at the end of his strength. I am going out with two detectives now; they have been on the case with me. This is quite apart from the general detective agency's work." "Father Honore," Mr. Van Ostend spoke with apparent effort, "I know I am right in my reasoning--and you are right in your fundamentals. We both may be wrong in the end, you in appealing to me for this aid to restrain prosecution, and I in giving it. Time alone will show us. But if we are, we must take the consequences of our act. If, by yielding, I make it easier for another man to do as Champney Googe has done, may God forgive me; I could never forgive myself. If you, in asking this, have erred in freeing from his punishment a man who deserves every bit he can get, you will have to reckon with your own conscience.--Don't misunderstand me. No spirit of philanthropy influences me in my act. Don't credit me with any 'love-to-man' attitude. I am going to advance the sum necessary to avoid prosecution if you find him; but I do it solely on that mother's account, and"--he hesitated--"because I don't want her, whom you have just seen, connected, even remotely, by the thought of what a penitentiary term implies. I don't want to entertain the thought that even the hem of _my_ child's garment has been so much as touched by a hand that will work at hard labor for seven, perhaps fifteen, years. And I want you to understand that, in yielding, my principle remains unchanged. I owe it to you to say this much, for you have dealt with me as man to man." "Mr. Van Ostend, we may both be in the wrong, as you say; if it prove so, I shall be the first to acknowledge my error to you. My one thought has been to save that mother further agony and to give a man, still young, another chance." "I've understood it so." He went to his writing table, sat down at it, and, for a moment, busied himself with making out his personal check for one hundred thousand dollars payable to the Flamsted Granite Quarries Company. He handed it to Father Honore to look at. The priest read it. "Whatever bail is needed, if an arrest should follow now," said Mr. Van Ostend further and significantly, "I will be responsible for." The two men clasped hands and looked understandingly into each other's eyes. What each read therein, what each felt in the other's palm beats, they realized there was no need to express in words.