asked you for more, and you would have given it;
but that strange, ridiculous something which we misname Southern
honour, that honour which strains at a gnat and swallows a camel,
withheld me, and I preferred to do worse. So I lied to you. The
money from my cabinet was not stolen save by myself. I am a liar
and a thief, but your eyes shall never tell me so.

"Tell the truth and have Berry released. I can stand it. Write me
but one letter to tell me of this. Do not plead with me, do not
forgive me, do not seek to find me, for from this time I shall be
as one who has perished from the earth; I shall be no more.

"Your brother,
FRANK."

By the time the servants came they found Mrs. Oakley as white as her
lord. But with firm hands and compressed lips she ministered to his
needs pending the doctor's arrival. She bathed his face and temples,
chafed his hands, and forced the brandy between his lips. Finally he
stirred and his hands gripped.

"The letter!" he gasped.

"Yes, dear, I have it; I have it."

"Give it to me," he cried. She handed it to him. He seized it and thrust
it into his breast.

"Did--did--you read it?"

"Yes, I did not know----"

"Oh, my God, I did not intend that you should see it. I wanted the
secret for my own. I wanted to carry it to my grave with me. Oh, Frank,
Frank, Frank!"

"Never mind, Maurice. It is as if you alone knew it."

"It is not, I say, it is not!"

He turned upon his face and began to weep passionately, not like a man,
but like a child whose last toy has been broken.

"Oh, my God," he moaned, "my brother, my brother!"

"'Sh, dearie, think--it 's--it 's--Frank."

"That 's it, that 's it--that 's what I can't forget. It 's
Frank,--Frank, my brother."

Suddenly he sat up and his eyes stared straight into hers.

"Leslie, no one must ever know what is in this letter," he said calmly.

"No one shall, Maurice; come, let us burn it."

"Burn it? No, no," he cried, clutching at his breast. "It must not be
burned. What! burn my brother's secret? No, no, I must carry it with
me,--carry it with me to the grave."

"But, Maurice----"

"I must carry it with me."

She saw that he was overwrought, and so did not argue with him.

When the doctor came, he found Maurice Oakley in bed, but better. The
medical man diagnosed the case and