hands were clenched and knotted fists.

Murder! At times it had occurred to him that there was a possibility
that some crook of the underworld would attempt to cover his tracks and
take refuge from pursuit by foisting himself on the authorities as the
Gray Seal. That was a possibility, a risk always to be run. But that
MURDER should be laid to the Gray Seal's door! Anger, merciless and
unrestrained, surged over Jimmie Dale.

There was peril here, live and imminent. Suppose that some day he should
be caught in some little affair, recognised and identified as the Gray
Seal, there would be the charge of murder hanging over him--and the
electric chair to face!

But the peril was not the only thing. Even worse to Jimmie Dale's
artistic and sensitive temperament was the vilification, the holding up
to loathing, contumely, and abhorrence of the name, the stainless name,
of the Gray Seal. It WAS stainless! He had guarded it jealously--as a
man guards the woman's name he loves.

Affairs that had mystified and driven the police distracted with
impotence there had been, many of them; and on the face of them--crimes.
But no act ever committed had been in reality a crime--none without
the highest of motives, the righting of some outrageous wrong, the
protection of some poor stumbling fellow human.

That had been his partnership with her. How, by what amazing means, by
what power that smacked almost of the miraculous she came in touch with
all these things and supplied him with the data on which to work he
did not know--only that, thanks to her, there were happier hearts and