"Well, you see the point, don’t you? It’s rather a high calling to be a banker. Now in this case the dead man whose fund you have looted trusted the bank; the bank has trusted you, and you have stolen from the bank. Miss Dounay has trusted you, and you have stolen her diamonds. You see at what I am getting?" Hampstead paused and glanced penetratingly into the face of Rollie, who had been a little swept out of himself, as much in wonder at the new insight into the life of the minister as at the convincing clarity of the lesson conveyed. "Yes," he replied thoughtfully and with an air of conviction, "that I am not to think of myself as merely a thief, but as something worse,—as a traitor to many sacred trusts." "Exactly," exclaimed the minister with satisfaction at the sign of moral perception growing. "To shield a thief from exposure is possibly criminal. To help a man repair the breaches of his trust, to put him in the way of never breaking another trust as long as he lives, that is the true work of the ministry. If it is for that you want help, Rollie, you have come to the right place." "I did not come for that," admitted the young fellow, strangely able to view himself objectively as a sadly dispiriting spectacle. "I came, as you said, in cowardice, because I didn’t know which way to turn, desiring only to find a way out. Somehow, I felt myself a victim. You make me see myself a crook. I came here feeling sorry for myself. You make me hate myself. You make me want to be worthy of trust. You give me hope. I have a feeling I never had before, that I am not much of a man, that I am not equal to a man’s job. But tell me what I must do to repair the breaches in my trust, and let me see if I think I can do them." Burbeck’s manner had become calmer, and something of the grayness of despair had left his face, but now at the recurrence of all his perplexities, he presented again the picture of a man cowering beneath a mountain that threatened to fall upon him. "First of all, you must go back to Miss Dounay with her diamonds," prescribed the minister seriously. "If you have not manhood enough to face her with your confession, I do not see the slightest hope for your character’s rehabilitation." "But the executors!" exclaimed Rollie, with the sense of danger still greater than his sense of guilt. "They will be checking me up at eleven. I’ve got to cover the shortage, or I’m lost. J.M. would be more terrible than Miss Dounay. It would not be vengeance with him. He’d send me to San Quentin, entirely without feeling, just as a matter of cold duty. He’d shake hands and tell me to look in when I got out. That’s J.M."