26

FERRY LIGHTS

There could be but one reason for this message from the District Attorney. I had identified myself too closely with the Gillespie case not to have attracted the notice of the police. I was about to be called upon to explain; and, while I shrank from the task, I could not but acknowledge to myself that the time for such explanations had come; that the burden then weighing upon me was too heavy to be borne any longer unassisted.

But the explanations I have thus alluded to would cost me Hope. Never would she forget through whose instrumentality the man she loved had been betrayed to his doom.