"'E's not the soft-'earted kind, isn't Mr.Trent." Trent's brows drew together ominously.
"You won't mend matters by impudence, Brady," he said sharply.

"Get along now"-- releasing his hold of the man's arm--"but you'll hear of this again." Brady shot away into the darkness like an arrow, probably chortling to himself that his captor had omitted to relieve him of the brace of rabbits he had poached; and Sara, turning again to Trent, renewed her plea for clemency.
But Trent remained adamant.
"Why shouldn't he stand his punishment like any other man ?" he said.
"Well, if it's true that his wife is ill, and that he has been out of work--" "Are you offering those facts as an excuse for dishonesty ?" asked Trent drily.
Sara smiled.
"Yes, I believe I am," she acknowledged.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Like nine-tenths of your sex, you are fiercely Tory in theory and a rank socialist in practice," he grumbled.
"Well, I'm not sure that that isn't a very good working basis to go on," she retorted.
As they stood in the porch at Sunnyside, she made yet one more effort to smooth matters over for the evil-doer, but Trent's face still showed unrelenting in the light that streamed out through the open doorway.
"Ask me something else," he said.

"I would do anything to please you, Sara, except"-- with a sudden tense decision--"except interfere with the course of justice.

Let every man pay the penalty for his own sin." "That's a hard creed," objected Sara.
"Hard ?" He shrugged his shoulders.

"Perhaps it is.