ed with half-concealed scorn, "it was your duty.
But let that pass. The money is safe enough; but, Mr. Hathaway,--and
this is the point I want to discuss with you,--it begins to look as if
the SECRET was safe no longer!" He had raised himself with some pain
and difficulty to draw nearer to Paul, and had again fixed his eyes
eagerly upon him. But Paul's responsive glance was so vague that he
added quickly, "You understand, sir; I believe that there are hounds--I
say hounds!--who would be able to blurt out at any moment that that
girl at Santa Clara is Kate Howard's daughter."

At any other moment Paul might have questioned the gravity of any such
contingency, but the terrible earnestness of the speaker, his dominant
tone, and a certain respect which had lately sprung up in his breast
for him, checked him, and he only asked with as much concern as he
could master for the moment:--

"What makes you think so?"

"That's what I want to tell you, Hathaway, and how I, and I alone, am
responsible for it. When the bank was in difficulty and I made up my
mind to guard the Trust with my own personal and private capital, I
knew that there might be some comment on my action. It was a delicate
matter to show any preference or exclusion at such a moment, and I took
two or three of my brother directors whom I thought I could trust into
my confidence. I told them the whole story, and how the Trust was
sacred. I made a mistake, sir," continued Pendleton sardonically, "a
grave mistake. I did not take into account that even in three years
civilization and religion had gained ground here. There was a hound
there--a blank Judas in the Trust. Well; he didn't see it. I think he
talked Scripture and morality. He said something about the wages of
sin being infamous, and only worthy of confiscation. He talked about
the sins of the father being visited upon the children, and justly. I
stopped him. Well! Do you know what's the matter with my ankle?
Look!" He stopped and, with some difficulty and invincible gravity,
throwing aside his dressing-gown, turned down his stocking, and exposed
to Paul's gaze the healed cicatrix of an old bullet-wound. "Troubled
me damnably near a year. Where I hit HIM--hasn't troubled him at all
since!

"I think," continued the colonel, falling back upon the pillow with an
air of relief, "that he told others--of his own kidney, sir,--though it
was a secret among gentlemen. But they have preferred to b