“When ye lave here will ye be going back to Kit Woodford and Graff Miller?”
The eyes of the young man flashed and, with an earnestness that seemed deadly in its intensity, he said hoarsely:
“No! never! I’ll die first!”
“Give me yer hand on that!”
It seemed as if the grip would crush the clasping fingers. The pressure continued for nearly a minute, while the two looked fixedly into each other’s eyes. The pledge had been made and into each heart stole the warm, irradiating glow that God gives to all the children of men when they break loose from evil and cling to that which is good.
And then the young man gave Mike his confidence. Aunt Maggie, with a tact that was creditable to her, left them together most of the forenoon and their talk was comparatively free from interruption.
As Noxon had hinted, he was the eldest son of parents who were in prosperous circumstances. He did not give their name nor place of residence, for it was unnecessary, but he admitted he had been wayward from early boyhood. He longed for wild adventure, and caused his family grief and anguish by his persistent wrongdoing. Finally, when he had matriculated at Yale, he ran away from home, taking what funds he could steal and fully resolved upon a life of sin.
“If there were pirates to-day, as there used to be, I should have striven to become the chief of a crew that flew the black flag, but I had to give that up. Some humorist has said that when a man starts to go to the devil he finds everything greased. So it proved with me. I fell in with Graff Miller, who, though he is about my age, has been a burglar for several years. I never suspected it until he found I was hunting for such a companion, when he told me of his partnership with Kit Woodford. In my vanity, I had shown how easy it was for me to open one of the old-fashioned combination safes, by detecting the working of the mechanism inside. This made me invaluable to them, and they proposed that I should become the third member of the gang. I jumped at the chance. Since Miller told me they used aliases instead of their right names, I took the one by which you know me.
“Their plan was to visit different points in the south of Maine, where there had been a number of post office robberies, and use me to open the safes. I was delighted with the scheme, and we started in a few weeks ago. The Beartown post office was the third visited——”
Just then a knock sounded on the door. Both were startled and Mike called: