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(REX)
David Ball
The Senator watched the sheathing of the costly jewel in its velvet bed with a glow of satisfaction. The glow was doubly induced. Primarily, because his love for his daughter was a sacred passion in his otherwise commercial and political life — and the jewel was for her. Secondarily, because he had that day introduced a cherished bill into the Senate, with a gratifyingly warm reception. The bill prohibited capital punishment. Not while he, Rodger Bruce, had power to sway the policies of the nation should men take a life for a life. It was a relic of barbarism ; sheer, misdirected, vengeful lust. It was primitive, purely uncivilized. And he, perhaps, was to be the motive power changing this unthinkable condition into a state of civilized reason.
He was all father when he clasped the glistening lavalliere about his daughter's slender throat, and he thought no diamond in the circlet was so radiant as her upturned face.
"It's too beautiful, daddy, dear," she whispered. "Why do you do these wonderful things for me?"
The Senator did not think it necessary to tell her that he was merely gratifying the call of his heart's blood when he granted her every whim, or that, in granting, he was paying tribute to a Some One gone far beyond the taking of his gifts.
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He had been able to give that dear Some One only his truest love, while she had left him this flower-girl to remind him of her thru the separating years. And he knew that, for both their sakes, he would give all that he could possess.
"I'll put it in the safe, darling," was what he said. Thus do we mask the nakedness of our selves with platitudes.
It sometimes seems that Evil and Good go hand in hand, closely, eternally interlinked. For while the Senator had been purchasing the rare bauble for his daughter and clasping it about her throat, with a reverence doubly compounded in his heart, a sinister, evil shadow had been dogging his footsteps and slinking about his home. It was late into the night when the shadow materialized into a sound strange to the Senator's ears. He had been into his den to take one last look at the safe, and was about to retire, when the unmistakable thud of iron upon wood caught his ear. Some one was in the den ! It took only a moment. The noise that had attracted him had been the thief putting his revolver on the table while he investigated the safe, and quicker than thought the Senator had slipped into the room, snatched up the weapon, and was holding the housebreaker at bay.