The Fatal Glove | Page 7

low, but a mellow radiance filled the place. A bed stood in one corner, and Sharp advanced toward it. The noise he had made, slight though it was, aroused the occupant, and, as she started up in affright, Arch met the soft, pleading eyes of Margie Harrison. She spoke to him, not to Sharp.
"Do not let him kill me!"
Sharp laid a rough hand on her shoulder, and put a knife at her throat.
Simultaneously, Arch sprang upon him like a tiger.
"Release that girl!" he hissed. "Dare to touch her with but the tips of your fingers, and by Heaven I will murder you!"
Sharp sprang back with an oath, and at the same moment a pistol-shot rang through the house, and Sharp, bathed in blood, fell to the floor. Old Mr. Trevlyn, travel-stained and wet, strode into the room.
"I've killed him!" he said, in a cracked voice of intense satisfaction. "He didn't catch old Trevlyn napping. I knew well enough they'd be after my diamonds, and I gave up the journey. Margie, child, are the jewels safe?"
She had fallen back on the pillows, pale as death, her white night-dress spattered with the blood of the dead robber.
Arch lifted a tiny glove from the carpet, thrust it into his bosom, and, before old Trevlyn could raise a hand to stop him, he had got clear of the premises.
Such a relief as he felt when the cool, fresh air struck his face. He had been saved from overt criminality. God had not permitted him to thus debase himself. Now that his excitement was gone, he saw the heinousness of the sin he had been about to commit in all its deformity.
Let old Trevlyn go! Let him gloat over his diamonds while yet he had opportunity. He would not despoil him of his treasures, but he could not give up his scheme of vengeance. It should be brought about some other way.
A large reward was offered by Mr. Trevlyn for the apprehension of Sharp's accomplice, but, as no description of his person could be given by any one except Margie, who could not or would not be explicit on that point, he was not secured.
Trevlyn recognized and appreciated her noble generosity in suffering him to go free, for in the one look she had given him on that disgraceful occasion, he had felt that she recognized him. But she pitied him enough to let him go free.
Well, he would show her that her confidence was not misplaced. He would deserve her forbearance. He was resolved upon a new life.
He left the saloon, and after many rebuffs succeeded in getting employment as errand-boy in a large importing house. The salary was a mere pittance, but it kept him in clothes and coarse food, until one day, about a year after his apprenticeship there, he chanced to save the life of Mr. Belgrade, the senior partner. A gas-pipe in the private office of the firm exploded, and the place took fire, and Mr. Belgrade, smothered and helpless, would have perished in the flames, had not Arch, with a bravery few would have expected in a bashful, retiring boy, plunged through the smoke and flame, and borne him to a place of safety.
Mr. Belgrade was a man with a conscience, and, grateful for his life, he rewarded his preserver by a clerkship of importance. The duties of this office he discharged faithfully for three years, when the death of the head clerk left a vacancy, and when Arch was nineteen he received the situation.
Through these three years he had been a close student. Far into the night he pored over his books, and, too proud to go to school, he hired a teacher and was taught privately. At twenty he was quite as well educated as nine-tenths of the young men now turned out by our fashionable colleges.
Rumors of Margie Harrison's triumphs reached him constantly, for Margie was a belle and a beauty now. Her parents were dead, and she had been left to the guardianship of Mr. Trevlyn, at whose house she made her home, and where she reigned a very queen. Old Trevlyn's heart at last found something beside his diamonds to worship, and Margie had it all her own way.
She came into the store of Belgrade and Co. one day, and asked to look at some laces. Trevlyn was the only clerk disengaged, and with a very changeable face he came forward to attend to her. He felt that she would recognize him at once--that she would remember where she had seen him the last time--a house-breaker! She held his reputation in her keeping.
His hand trembled as he took down the laces--she glanced at his face. A start of surprise--a conscious, painful blush swept over her face. He dropped the box, and the rich laces