"If somebody else stole them, and Brother Hampstead, to protect the thief, planned to hold them temporarily while immunity was gained for the coward, he must see now that he made a terrible mistake, that for once he has carried his extravagant leniency entirely too far. If this theory is correct, the thief must have fled beyond the very reach of the newspapers, or be insane, or a drug fiend, or something like that. I cannot conceive of any human being so base, or in a position so delicate that he would not instantly make a public confession to spare his benefactor." Rollie had turned and was looking straight at his mother, almost reproachfully, certainly protestingly, at the torture she was causing him. She saw this strange look and stopped. "Oh, my boy," she exclaimed. "You are so sympathetic. How proud, how selfishly happy it makes me to feel that nothing like this can ever come upon my son!" But Rollie’s eyes had shifted quickly to a picture on the opposite wall, and he braced himself desperately against these bomb-like assaults of his mother upon his position. "Yes," he said after an interval, "it must be pretty hard on Hampstead." But though he made this remark seem natural, his brain was again reeling. With mighty effort he forced himself to give the conversation another turn by a question which had been fascinating him during the whole day. "Tell me," he asked, "how is father taking it?" "Very hardly," Mrs. Burbeck confessed. "You know your father: so proud, so exact and scrupulous in all his dealings, with his word better than the average man’s bond, yet not lenient toward the man who errs. He thinks everybody good or bad, every soul white or black. When Brother Hampstead was prosecuting law-breakers in court, father was proud of him; but when he goes off helping jail-birds and fallen women, father is harsh and utterly unsympathetic. "Last night when the first charge appeared, father was greatly incensed, because at last, he said, Brother Hampstead had done the thing he always feared, brought the church into a notoriety that was unpleasant. This morning, at the story of the diamonds in the vault, he was dumbfounded. To-night he talks of nothing but that, whatever the outcome, All People’s shall clear its skirts of the unpleasantness by requesting Brother Hampstead’s resignation." "Resignation!" Rollie gasped. "Resignation—simply for doing his duty! Why," he burst out excitedly, "that would be treachery! It would be the act of Judas. Don’t let father do it, mother," he pleaded. "Don’t let him put me in that position!" A wild look had come into the young man’s face as he spoke. "You? In what position?" Mrs. Burbeck was surprised at the expression on her son’s face. For a moment Rollie floundered wildly. "Why, you see—I—I believe in Hampstead. I—I have told the bank that he is all right, no matter what happens. I don’t want my own father reading him out of the church, do I?"