“I should think not,” Roy answered, dryly, and then Tom spoke of Roy’s mother and the good she had done him as a boy. “If I had followed her advice I should have been a better man, but what is done is done and cannot be changed. Do you believe a bad man can become a thoroughly good one?” The question startled Roy, who felt unequal to meet it, but who answered with a gravity beyond his years, “It depends upon what he has done. If reparation can be made he should make it, and—. Yes, it seems to me a bad man may become a good one. Of course the memory of the bad would always cling to him, making him sorry for the past and most sorry when the world was praising him.” Roy had no idea how his words were stinging Tom, who answered quickly, “That’s just it. Memory! If we could kill that; but we can’t. Hell must be made up of memories.” Again the suspicion of the previous night began to creep into Roy’s mind, but he cast it aside, while Tom roused himself from his melancholy mood and began to point out the lights and shadows on the mountains and asked if Roy would like to try a trail on the morrow. Nothing could suit Roy better, and for the next two or three days Tom went with him from mountain to mountain and was as gay as if no harrowing memory were intruding itself upon his mind. At last Roy suggested that they go to the scene of the last hold-up and look again for the missing diamonds. At first Tom hesitated. That spot was like a haunted spot to him, but there was no good reason for refusing, and they set off together for the scene of the attempted robbery. Once there Tom grew very communicative, rehearsing the proceedings even more dramatically than Fanny had done when describing them to Roy. Here was the stage. Here the robber stood waiting for it, and commanding the driver to halt and the passengers to hold up their hands. Here Inez sat and sprang over the wheel with a shriek which must have frightened the brigand quite as much as the revolver which proved not to be loaded, and here she lay fainting with her head in Fanny’s lap when all was over. “Were you here through it all? I thought you came later,” Roy said, and Tom, who saw he had made a mistake, colored and stammered, “Sounds as if I was here, don’t it? You know, I happened along after the rascal had left, and a more frightened lot of people you never saw. I have heard Inez describe the scene so graphically that I feel as if I were a part of it.” “I do believe you were,” Roy thought. “Where was Fanny’s hat when you picked it up? We will look for the diamonds there, first,” he said. Tom’s face was flushed, but his manner was composed and natural as he pointed out the spot where he had rescued the crushed hat from the mud. The grass was growing there now, and there was not a spot within a radius of many yards where the diamonds could have dropped and lain hidden.