letting the matter slip too long. Something must be decided upon.
Stephen!" nervously, "wake up! You have forgotten our subject, I think."

"No," the bald head raised out of the coat-collar in which it had sunk.
"Go on."

Soule looked at him perplexed a moment. Was he dulled, or had he
learned in those years to shut in looks and thoughts closer prisoners
than himself?

"It is a mere question of time," he said, a little composed. "Frazier is
an agent: shall this money accrue to me or to his employers? I have
risked all on it. I must have it at any cost."

"At any cost?"

"At any," boldly. "Is it any easier for me to talk of that chance than
you, Stephen?"

"No, John. Your hands are clean," with an exhausted look. "I know that.
You had a kind Irish heart. What money you made with one hand you flung
away with the other."

Soule blushed like a woman.

"No matter," beating some dust off his boot. "But for Frazier,--I've
talked that over with Judith, and--I don't value human life as you do:
it may Lave been my residence in the South. It matters little how a man
dies, so he lives right. This Frazier, if he dies to defend his package,
would do a nobler deed than in any of his dime-scraping days. For me, my
part is not robbery. The paper is neither specie nor a draft."

His tongue swung fluently now, for it had convinced himself.

"There is but a night left to decide. What will you do, Stephen?"

He put his hand on the green coat with its gaudy buttons, and leaned
against his brother as they used to go arms over shoulders to school.
Soule's big throat was full of tears; he had never felt so full of
sorrowful pity as in this the foulest purpose of his life. Unselfish it
seemed to him. O God! what a hard life Stephen's had been! This would
cure him: two or three sea-voyages, a winter in Florence, would freshen
him a little, maybe,--but not much.

"Eh? What will you do, old fellow?" striking his shoulder. "This is the
last night."

"I know that. I have been waiting for it all my life."

He put his red handkerchief up to his mouth to conceal the face, as if
its meaning were growing too plain. Soule looked at him fixedly a
moment, then, taking him by the button, began tapping off his sentences
on his breast.

"I'll state the case. I'll be plain. Stephen, you want food; you want
clothes; you"--

"Is that all I want?" facing him.

The woman started, as she saw his face fully, and his look, for the
first time. A q