ey
will, but I tell you," he added, pathetically, tapping himself over the
heart--"though you don't mention it to Mary--I know better. Oh! yes, I
know better. That's about all, except, of course, that I should wish to
see her settled before I'm gone. A man dies happier, you understand, if
he is certain whom his only child is going to marry; for when he is
dead I suppose that he will know nothing of what happens to her. Or,
perhaps," he added, as though by an afterthought, "he may know too much,
and not be able to help; which would be painful, very painful."

"Don't get into those speculations, John," said the Colonel, waving his
hand. "They are unpleasant, and lead nowhere--sufficient to the day is
the evil thereof."

"Quite so, quite so. Life is a queer game of blind-man's buff, isn't it;
played in a mist on a mountain top, and the players keep dropping over
the precipices. But nobody heeds, because there are always plenty more,
and the game goes on forever. Well, that's my side of the case. Do you
wish me to put yours?"

"I should like to hear your view of it."

"Very good, it is this. Here's a nice girl, no one can deny that, and a
nice man, although he's odd--you will admit as much. He's got name, and
he will have fame, or I am much mistaken. But, as it chances, through no
fault of his, he wants money, or will want it, for without money the
old place can't go on, and without a wife the old race can't go on. Now,
Mary will have lots of money, for, to tell the truth, it keeps piling up
until I am sick of it. I've been lucky in that way, Colonel, because I
don't care much about it, I suppose. I don't think that I ever yet made
a really bad investment. Just look. Two years ago, to oblige an old
friend who was in the shop with me when I was young, I put 5,000 pounds
into an Australian mine, never thinking to see it again. Yesterday I
sold that stock for 50,000 pounds."

"Fifty thousand pounds!" ejaculated the Colonel, astonished into
admiration.

"Yes, or to be accurate, 49,375 pounds, 3s., 10d., and--that's where the
jar comes in--I don't care. I never thought of it again since I got the
broker's note till this minute. I have been thinking all day about my
heart, which is uneasy, and about what will happen to Mary when I am
gone. What's the good of this dirty money to a dying man? I'd give it
all to have my wife and the boy I lost back for a year or two; yes, I
would go into a shop again and sell sugar like my gr