self. And, I say, really the young lady might have quite seriously involved herself, too. For, you know, the perjury just in itself is actionable—oh, entirely actionable. Besides, might you not have shown that it was possible for you to have been upon the streets at that hour and robbed no one at all?'"
"And what did you say?"
"Oh, I said that I might have found some magistrate who would have considered that just possible."
"But," the girl laughed delightfully, "now he is beginning to consider my qualifications as an accomplice?"
"Oh, not quite," Preston replied truthfully. "I think he has finally decided about me now, yet will welcome me into his cabin to relieve the monotony of the voyage. For he is one of the kind who have crossed no end of times and keep on crossing automatically from habit whenever they can, but are always bored.
"Yet in many ways he is the best possible sort to have on the ship; for, though he him-
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