The Retired Burglar

In a house that I went into one night in the country," said the retired ] burglar, "I saw when I got up on the secoud floor a light coming out into the hall from an open door. When I got a look iuto that door, I saw a man all dressed standing leaning over a bed. I conldn't see his face, but I could see anxiety on the back of bis head. Lying in the bed was a child, thin and white and sti 11, but awake and looking up at its father. Backing out of the door, I ticked ray lamp against the door jamb. The man looked up. He wasn't soared. 1 doubt if he would have been anyway, but he was thinking of something else now. " 'Come in,' he says, and I went in. "The chiJd looked at me as I walked across the floor, and then looked up again at its father, saying nothing, but just lying there and looking up. „ "How the man caino to be fixed in that way, all alone with that child, I could not even guess. Wife just died maybe, but there he was and thinking of nothing else in the world, and the child was the pitifullest looking little child I ever saw. "What the man wanted was to have me go for the doctor. He told me his name, and the doctor's name, and where he lived, and I went. It was late, you understand, but I whanged away on the doctor's door till I heard him open his window. I told him what was wanted. " 'All right,' he says, and I thought by the way he said it he knew about the child. "Then I went my way. I'd lost a