gue and vicious heart; or you, or you, who, from one stock, recognize
but one law: the law of cold-blooded selfishness which seeks its own in
face of all oaths and at the cost of another man's heart-break.

"This I say to such as know my story. But lest there be one amongst you
who has not heard from parent or uncle the true tale of him who has
brought you all under one roof to-night, I will repeat it here in words,
that no man may fail to understand why I remembered my oath through life
and beyond death, yet stand above you an accusing spirit while you quaff
me toasts and count the gains my justice divides among you.

"I, as you all remember, was the weak one--the ne'er-do-weel. When all
of you were grown and had homes of your own, I still remained under the
family roof-tree, fed by our father's bounty and looking to our father's
justice for that share of his savings which he had promised to all
alike. When he died it came to me as it came to you; but I had married
before that day; married, not, like the rest of you, for what a wife
could bring, but for sentiment and true passion. This, in my case, meant
a loving wife, but a frail one; and while we lived a little while on the
patrimony left us, it was far too small to support us long without some
aid from our own hands; and our hands were feeble and could not work.
And so we fell into debt for rent and, ere long, for the commonest
necessities of life. In vain I struggled to redeem myself; the time of
my prosperity had not come and I only sank deeper and deeper into debt
and finally into indigence. A baby came. Our landlord was kind and
allowed us to stay for two weeks under the roof for whose protection we
could not pay; but at the end of that time we were asked to leave; and I
found myself on the road with a dying wife, a wailing infant, no money
in my purse and no power in my arm to earn any. Then when heart and hope
were both failing, I recalled that ancient oath and the six prosperous
homes scattered up and down the very highway on which I stood. I could
not leave my wife; the fever was in her veins and she could not bear me
out of her sight; so I put her on a horse, which a kind old neighbor was
willing to lend me, and holding her up with one hand, guided the horse
with the other, to the home of my brother Luke. He was a straight
enough fellow in those days--physically, I mean--and he looked able and
strong that morning, as he stood in the open doorway of his house