Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom's happiness had been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be what prop and stay I might to Blossom. While I sat by my girl's bed, there was all the time a peril that kept plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a conviction, even while I held my girl's hand and looked into her vacant eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction; it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so, while I waited by Blossom's side, and to blot out the black chance of it, I sent word for Inspector McCue. The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed--for his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been dislocated--he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach. It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already itching for the caitiff neck of him. Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice; he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when word and money were given him to take himself away. When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my taste.