"It is unjust," admitted the Angel of the Chair. "Yet the innocent often suffer injustice, and you must realize that you are not immune. That is your only course, and I came specifically to warn you of it. Prove there was no theft, or get the thief!" There was snap and sparkle in Mrs. Burbeck’s eyes. Despite her physical frailty, her spirit was stout, and her conviction so forcefully conveyed that the minister delivered himself of a gesture of utter helplessness. "I cannot do either," he said, half-whispering his desperation. "Yet I think I appreciate better than you how sound your advice has been. But there are reasons that I cannot give you, that I cannot give to any one, why the course which you suggest cannot be followed. I must go another way to vindication; but," and his voice rose buoyantly, "I will go and I will get it." Mrs. Burbeck received with misgivings her pastor’s complete rejection of the advice she had offered, yet some unconscious force in the young minister’s manner swept her on quickly against her judgment and her will to an enormous increase of faith, both in the strength and the judgment of the man. As for Hampstead, he concluded his rejection by doing something he had never done before. That was to lean low, his face chiseled in lines of gravity and devotion, and taking the delicate hand of Mrs. Burbeck, that in its weakness was like a drooping flower, lift it to his lips and kiss it. "Conserve all your spirit," he said solemnly, still clinging tenderly to the hand. "It may be that I shall have to lean heavily upon you." "You may have my life to the uttermost," she breathed trustfully, never dreaming the thought unthinkable which the words suggested to her pastor and friend. But an extraneous idea came pressing in, and Mrs. Burbeck raised toward the minister, in a gesture of appeal, the hand his lips had just been pressing, as she pleaded: "And do not think too hardly of the woman. She loves you." "Loves me!" protested Hampstead, with a ghastly hoarseness. "The woman is incapable of love—of passion even. She is all fire, but without heat—though once she had it. She is a mere blaze of ambition. All she cared for was to bring me to my knees, to dangle me like a scalp at her waist." Mrs. Burbeck steadied him with a glance from a mind unimpressed. "Be sorry, very sorry for her!" she insisted gravely. "Acquit yourself of no impatience—not even a reproachful look, if you can help it. She is to be pitied. Only the malice of unsated love could do what she has done. Show yourself noble enough, Christ-like enough, to be very, very sorry for her!" "_We got to go if we get there by nine!_" It was the smothered voice of Wyatt, calling through the door. *CHAPTER XXX* *THE SCENE IN THE VAULT*