The Adrians had been neighbours in his father’s best days, and Edward and Ruth had been boy and girl sweethearts. No harm was known of the Marstons then. They lived in a good house, kept servants, and ostensibly were gentle people. Edward visited at the house, Mr. and Mrs. Adrian liked him, and it was tacitly understood that the young people were in love. The one pure passion of Edward Marston’s life was his love for Ruth Adrian. If anything could have sobered and steadied him it would have been her influence. Unhappily, at the very time that influence was most needed, an event happened which severed their lives for ever. The elder Marston ran away from his creditors, some very ‘peculiar financial transactions came to light, and when Mr. Adrian, awakened to the danger of the situation, made inquiries, he found that the son was leading an evil life, and was the constant companion of gentlemanly blacklegs. The next time Edward called at the Adrians’ he was forbidden the house, Ruth wrote him a noble, womanly letter, returned his presents, and declared that it broke her heart to give him up, but that her duty to herself and to those dearest to her demanded it. She should never love anyone else and never forget him. She would pray God that he might yet lead a better life, and some day call a pure and honest woman wife. The girl’s tears fell fast and thick as she wrote. She thought she was doing her duty. Reared in a school of morality deeply tinged with religious fervour, Ruth saw no other way out of the difficulty. It seemed to her almost a sin to have loved a bad man. The love she could not crush, but the man she would look upon no more. This breaking down of the last barrier between himself and utter recklessness happened immediately after Ralph Egerton’s murder—for murder all concerned firmly believed it to be. Ruth Adrian was the last link that bound him to respectability. That link snapped and he was free—free to float out into the ocean of wickedness, and sink or swim as luck determined. He went to America and led a life of adventure. He utilized his talents in a big field, but an overrun one. The ‘smart man’ is a type of American society, and a redundant type. Marston may have prospered at one period, but he must have come to an evil time at last, for certain it is that he returned to England almost penniless, and on the night he met Birnie outside the Blue Pigeons he was actually without a copper. That meeting was the turning point in his career. It placed a little capital at his disposal, and capital is the one thing needed to make a fair start in anything in this country. Marston had learned much in America, and he saw a way to utilize his experience. High-art crime has been developed rapidly in these latter days. Edward Marston was one of its pioneers. He brought to the ‘business’ in which he embarked education, skill, ingenuity, and a knowledge of the world.