of one kind to these threats, such as to induce him to guard the papers carefully, pending the time when he could duplicate them and place one set where they could not possibly be reached. But before this was even undertaken, Mrs. Parlin had become so alarmed that she urged her husband to abandon the matter and destroy the papers and let this be known where it would cause a cessation of the annoyance to which they were both subjected. But here she found him inflexible, and at last her terror reached such a pitch that she determined herself to steal and destroy the papers.
It was some time before she was able to carry this resolve into execution, and during the delay she reached a point of terror little short of insanity. At last, under the impulse of fear intensified by a particularly boldly expressed threat, she took desperate chances and, as desperate chances will do at times, succeeded. She took the papers from her husband's desk almost under his very eyes, and ever after had the cruel pain of knowing that the trust she had betrayed was so great that no suspicion of the betrayal had ever crossed his mind.
