“The truth is,” said Stephen Clode, beginning with an effort, “I have taken a good deal on myself, and I am afraid you will blame me, Mr. Lindo. If so, I cannot help it.” His face flushed, and he beat a tattoo on the table with his fingers. “I came across,” he continued, “to borrow a book a little before ten. The lights here were out; but, to my surprise, your house-door was open.” “As I found it myself!” the rector exclaimed. “Precisely. Naturally I had misgivings, and I looked into the hall. I saw a streak of light proceeding from the doorway of this room, and I came in softly to see what it meant. I heard a man moving about in here, and I threw open the door much as you did.” “Did you?” said Lindo eagerly. “And who was it—the man, I mean?” “That is just what I cannot tell you,” replied the curate. His face was pale, but there was a smile upon it, and he met the other’s gaze without flinching. He had settled his plan now. “He got away, then?” said the rector, disappointed. “No. He did not try either to escape or to resist,” was the answer. “But was he really a burglar?” “Yes.” “Then where is he?” The rector looked round as if he expected to see the man lying bound on the floor. “What did you do with him?” “I let him go.” Lindo whistled; and when he had done whistling still stood with his mouth open and a face of the most complete mystification. “You let him go?” he repeated mechanically, but not until after a pause of half a minute or so. “Why, may I ask?” “You have every right to ask,” the curate answered with firmness, and yet despondently. “I will tell you why—why I let him go, and why I cannot tell you his name. He is a parishioner of yours. It was his first offence, and I believe him to be sincerely penitent. I believe, too, that he will never repeat the attempt, and that the accident of my entrance saved him from a life of crime. I may have been wrong—I dare say I was wrong,” continued the curate, growing excited—excitement came very easily to him at the moment—“but I cannot go back from my word. The man’s misery moved me. I thought what I should have felt in his place, and I promised him, in return for his pledge that he would live honestly in the future, that he should go free, and that I would not betray his name to any one—to any one!” “Well!” exclaimed the rector, his tone one of unbounded admiration in every sense of the word. “When you do a thing nobly, my dear fellow, you do do it nobly, and no mistake! I wonder who it was! But I must not ask you.” “No.” said Clode. “And now,” he continued, still beating the tattoo on the table, “you do not blame me greatly?” “I do not, indeed. No. Only I think perhaps that you should have retained the right to tell me.” “I should have done so,” said the curate regretfully. “He has taken nothing, I suppose?” the rector continued, turning to the cupboard, and, not only satisfied with the explanation, but liking Clode better than he had liked him before.