wanted me to do that, to take a thousand of her jewels, if she had had
them, if she had known--but, you see, sir, she could not know without
it breaking her heart--I think the dearest thing in life to her is the
boy's memory."

Outside on Sixth Avenue an elevated train roared and thundered by--it
seemed strangely extraneous and incongruous.

"And now, sir"--the old gentleman's voice seemed tired, a little
weary--"though you give me back the pendant, I do not see how I can
return it to my wife. It was part of the agreement that I should notify
the police--it made it impossible for me to inform against Thorold,
for--for I was the thief."

Jimmie Dale nodded. "I was thinking of that," he said.

He opened the metal case; and, while the old gentleman watched in
amazement and growing consternation, he lifted out a gray paper seal
with his tweezers, moistened the adhesive side with the tip of his
tongue, and pressed the seal firmly with his coat sleeve over the
central cluster of the pendant.

The old gentleman tried twice to speak before a word would come.

"You! You--the Gray Seal!" he stammered at last. "But only to-night I
was reading in the papers, and they said you were a murderer, an ogre of
hell, and--"

"And now, possibly," interrupted Jimmie Dale whimsically, "though
circumstances will force you to keep your opinion to yourself, you may