“Been visiting the little mother?” he asked, when she paused on the step above him.

“Yes—­no; I ran over to tell you that we moved Nancy to-day.”

“Oh!  Well, that’s comfortable.  She was willing?”

“Y-es:  almost, at first; and altogether willing when I told her that I—­that she—­” There was an embarrassed moment and then the truth came out.  “Perhaps I should have asked you first:  but she was quite satisfied when I told her that she owed her changed condition to the person whose duty it was to provide for her.  You don’t mind, do you?”

The question was almost a beseechment; but Tom was thinking of something else.

“No, I don’t mind,” he said absently, and the under-thought dealt savagely with Nan—­with a woman who, for the sake of the loaves and the fishes, and the shielding of the real offender, would suffer an innocent man to go to the social gallows for lack of the word which would have cleared him.  He laughed rather bitterly and added, out of the heart of the under-thought:  “I’m glad I’m not naturally inclined to be pessimistic.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because, after hearing”—­he changed his mind suddenly, and transferred the hard word from Nan to Mr. Vancourt Henniker—­“after what I’ve been hearing this afternoon I find myself more in the notion of weeping with the angels than of laughing with the devils.”

“What has happened?” she asked, sympathetically alive to his need in one breath, and keenly apprehensive for her own peace of mind in the next.

“An exceedingly small thing, as the world’s measurements go.  I was in town, and made a business call on Mr. Henniker.  He’s a member of your church, isn’t he?”

“Of St. Michael’s in the city,” she corrected.  “You know I claim membership here at home in St. John’s.”

“Well, it’s all the same.  He is what you would call a Christian man, I take it?”

“Why not?” she demanded.  “What has he done to make you doubt it?”

“Oh, nothing worth mentioning, perhaps.  I needed some money to bribe a lot of political grafters in a Pennsylvania city where I’m trying to sell a bill of water-pipe.  I went to Mr. Henniker to borrow it.”

“And, of course, he wouldn’t let you have it for any such wretched purpose!” she flamed out.

“No, you are mistaken; it’s just the other way around.  I told him what it was for, hoping rather vaguely, I think, that he’d sit on me and make the crime impossible.  But he didn’t.”

“You don’t mean that he lent you the money after you had told him what you purposed doing with it?” It was too dark for him to see her face, but there was something like a breath-catching of horror in her voice.

“I’m sorry it shocks you, but he did.  More than that, he took the trouble to try to explain away my scruples; made it seem quite a virtuous thing before he got through.  You wouldn’t believe it now, would you?”