I made Randolph do it.  I have always been able to influence him to what I pleased.  The sin is all mine, not his.  We had been selling my mother’s jewels little by little for several years, so we had no difficulty in getting rid of the stones, which Randolph took from their settings and sold to different dealers.  My mother knows nothing of where the money came from.  We are living in Bermuda now, in comfort and luxury, I as well as she, on the profits of my thievery.  I am not sorry.  It has wrecked life, perhaps eternity, for me, but I would do it again to save my mother.

“I put this confession into your hands to do with, as far as I am concerned, what you like.  If the saint in you believes that I ought to be sent to jail, take this to Mr. Litterny and have him send me to jail.  But you shan’t touch Randolph—­you are not free there.  It was I who did it—­he was my tool,—­any one will tell you I have the stronger will.  You shall not hurt Randolph—­that is barred.

“You see now why I couldn’t be engaged to you—­you wouldn’t want to marry a thief, would you, Norman?  I can never make restitution, you know, for the money will be mostly gone before we get home, and there is no more to come.  You could not, either, for you said that you had little beyond your salary.  We could never make it good to Mr. Litterny, even if you wanted to marry me after this.  Mr. Litterny is your best friend; you are bound to him by a thousand ties of gratitude and affection.  You can’t marry a thief who has robbed him of five thousand dollars, and never tell him, and go on taking his gifts.  That is the way the saint will look at it—­the saint who thundered awful warnings at me in the little church at St. George’s.  But even that day there was something gentler than the dreadful holiness of you.  Do you remember how you pleaded, begged as if of your father, for your brothers and sisters?  ’Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our iniquities,’ you said.  Do you remember?  As you said that to God, I say it to you, I love you.  I leave my fate at your mercy.  But don’t forget that you yourself begged that, with your hands stretched out to heaven, as I stretch my hands to you, Norman, Norman—­’Deal not with me according to my sins, neither reward me according to my iniquities.’”

The noises of a ship moving across a quiet ocean went on steadily.  Many feet tramped back and forth on the deck, and cheerful voices and laughter floated through the skylight, and down below a man knelt in a narrow cabin with his head buried in his arms, motionless.

CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOR