" she asked softly.

Her husband turned upon her savagely. "I'm not going to go!" he cried.
"That's just what I've been telling... him. And I tell you again, all of
you, I'm not going. You can't bully me."

"Why, Al, dear, you said--" she began.

"Never mind what I said!" he broke out. "I've said something else right
now, and you've heard it, and that settles it."

He walked across the room and threw himself with emphasis into a Morris
chair. But the other man was swiftly upon him. The talon-like fingers
gripped his shoulders, jerked him to his feet, and held him there.

"You've reached the limit, Al, and I want you to understand it. I've
tried to treat you like... like my brother, but hereafter I shall treat
you like the thing that you are. Do you understand?"

The anger in his voice was cold. The blaze in his eyes was cold. It was
vastly more effective than any outburst, and Al cringed under it and
under the clutching hand that was bruising his shoulder muscles.

"It is only because of me that you have this house, that you have the
food you eat. Your position? Any other man would have been shown the
door a year ago--two years ago. I have held you in it. Your salary has
been charity. It has been paid out of my pocket. Mary... her dresses...
that gown she has on is made over; she wears the discarded dresses of
her sisters, of my wife. Charity--do you understand? Your children--they
are wearing the discarded clothes of my children, of the children of my
neighbours who think the clothes went to some orphan asylum. And it is
an orphan asylum... or it soon will be."

He emphasized each point with an unconscious tightening of his grip
on the shoulder. Al was squirming with the pain of it. The sweat was
starting out on his forehead.

"Now listen well to me," his brother went on. "In three minutes you will
tell me that you are going with me. If you don't, Mary and the children
will be taken away from you--to-day. You needn't ever come to the
office. This house will be closed to you. And in six months I shall
have the pleasure of burying you. You have three minutes to make up your
mind."

Al made a strangling movement, and reached up with weak fingers to the
clutching hand.

"My heart... let me go... you'll be the death of me," he gasped.

The hand thrust him down forcibly into the Morris chair and released
him.

The clock on the mantle ticked loudly. George glanced at it, and
at Mary. She was leaning against th