Madge interrupted my speech there by holding out her hand.

“You don’t suppose,” she said, “that, after all you have done for us, I could be angry over what was merely a mistake?”

That’s what I call a trump of a girl, worth loving for a lifetime.

Well, we coupled on to No. 2 that morning and started East, this time Mr. Cullen’s car being the “ender.”  All on 218 were wildly jubilant, as was natural, but I kept growing bluer and bluer.  I took a farewell dinner on their car the night we were due in Albuquerque, and afterward Miss Cullen and I went out and sat on the back platform.

“I’ve had enough adventures to talk about for a year,” Madge said, as we chatted the whole thing over, “and you can no longer brag that the K. & A. has never had a robbery, even if you didn’t lose anything.”

“I have lost something,” I sighed sadly.

Madge looked at me quickly, started to speak, hesitated, and then said, “Oh, Mr. Gordon, if you only could know how badly I have felt about that, and how I appreciate the sacrifice.”

I had only meant that I had lost my heart, and, for that matter, probably my head, for it would have been ungenerous even to hint to Miss Cullen that I had made any sacrifice of conscience for her sake, and I would as soon have asked her to pay for it in money as have told her.

“You mustn’t think—­” I began.

“I have felt,” she continued, “that your wish to serve us made you do something you never would have otherwise done, for—­Well, you—­any one can see how truthful and honest—­and it has made me feel so badly that we—­Oh, Mr. Gordon, no one has a right to do wrong in the world, for it brings such sadness and danger to innocent—­And you have been so generous—­”

I couldn’t let this go on.  “What I did,” I told her, “was to fight fire with fire, and no one is responsible for it but myself.”

“I should like to think that, but I can’t,” she said.  “I know we all tried to do something dishonest, and while you didn’t do any real wrong, yet I don’t think you would have acted as you did except for our sake.  And I’m afraid you may some day regret—­”

“I sha’n’t,” I cried; “and, so far from meaning that I had lost my self-respect, I was alluding to quite another thing.”

“Time?” she asked.

“No.”

“What?”

“Something else you have stolen.”

“I haven’t,” she denied.

“You have,” I affirmed.

“You mean the novel?” she asked; “because I sent it in to 97 to-night.”

“I don’t mean the novel.”

“I can’t think of anything more but those pieces of petrified wood, and those you gave me,” she said demurely.  “I am sure that whatever else I have of yours you have given me without even my asking, and if you want it back you’ve only got to say so.”

“I suppose that would be my very best course,” I groaned.

“I hate people who force a present on one,” she continued, “and then, just as one begins to like it, want it back.”