Certainly he would not carry his folly so far as to put on gloves for the shooting match with which you credit him, unless there was criminal intent back of his folly--which, of course, would be as hard for you as for me to believe." Sweetwater winced, but noting the kindly twinkle with which Mr.Gryce softened the bitterness of this lesson, he brightened again and listened with becoming patience as the old man went on to say: "To discuss probabilities in connection with this other name seems futile this morning.

The ease with which one can twist the appearances of things to fit a preconceived theory as exemplified by the effort you have just made warns us to be chary of pushing one's idea too far without the firmest of bases to support it.

If you find a man's coat showing somewhere on its lining evidences that there had once been sewed to it a loop of the exact dimensions of the one I passed over to you last night, I should consider it a much more telling clue to the personality of X than a pair of gloves in the pocket of a man who in all probability intends to finish up the day with a call on the girl he admires." "I understand." Sweetwater was quite himself again.

"But do you know that this is no easy task you are giving me, Mr.Gryce.Where a man has but two coats, or three at best, it might not be so hard, perhaps, to get at them.

But some men have a dozen, and if I don't mistake----" "Sweetwater, I meant to give you a task of no little difficulty.