room, even as it appeared unembellished in Haggard's paper, overwhelmed him.
"It is the manner of a thief hopelessly guilty," he confessed.
On the other hand, when Haggard's paper in an editorial asked argumentatively: "Why should this man steal? What need had he for money in large sums?" John's judgment approved the soundness of such a defense. "There were a score," affirmed the editorial, "perhaps a hundred men who had and would freely supply Doctor Hampstead with all the money necessary for the exigencies of the work to which he notoriously devoted all his time. As for his personal needs, the man lived simply. He had no wants beyond his income."
"True—perfectly true. A good point that," conceded Hampstead to himself.
But that evening one of the San Francisco papers reported that at about the time the diamonds were stolen, the Reverend Hampstead had approached various persons in Oakland with a view to borrowing a large sum of money without stating for what the money was required. The paper volunteered the conjecture that the minister, through speculation in stocks, had overdrawn some fund of which he was a trustee, and of which he was presently to be called upon to give an accounting; hence the desperate resort to the theft of the diamonds and the temporary holding of them in his vault, boldly counting on his own immunity from suspicion.
This conjecture was extremely damaging. It skillfully suggested a logical hypothesis upon which the minister could be assumed to be a thief; and so high had been the man's standing that some such hypothesis was necessary.
As Hampstead read this, he felt the viciousness of the thrust. It was false, but it had the color of an actual in-
