g. "You shall not think so meanly of me as that. I told you why my
father needs the money--all that he told to Mr. Neckart. Surely, you don't
understand?"

"Oh, I understand your father very well," smiling dryly. It suited him
just now to consider the captain a shrewd humbug, and his mysterious
ailment the last dodge to raise money and sympathy.

The man at that moment looked so ill, so small and spiteful, that Jane's
heart gave a sudden wrench of pity. It was a cruel, brutal thing, she
felt, in her to stop him on the edge of the grave and demand his money.
She put her hand to his forehead: it was cold and clammy. "Don't wrong my
father in this way," she said in a lower voice than before. "You have had
our money all the time, and our life has been hard--hard. I never said
that before, but it is true."

He looked at her now, his courage flickering up to meet the crisis: "I
hear you. Go on!"

"My father's life depends upon your honesty. I only ask you to remember
that."

"You use plain words. So shall I." He thrust his hand into a drawer of the
table before him, drew out a folded paper and pushed it toward her: "There
is your answer. That is my will. My property is left in the way it will do
God service. You can read it if you choose."

"And my father--?"

"I have not left him a dollar."

She turned on him, silent, a moment: he cowered and evaded her eyes.

"You shall not wrong him. He shall not die for the want of the money if I
can help it," in the same quiet voice. She took up the paper, passed him
and laid it on the fire, then watched it shrivel and burn to ashes. He
could not have detained her, any more than he could stay the scorching
flame with his hand.

She threw her cloak about her without a word, and drew the hood over her
head.

He pulled the bell violently: "You have only given me the trouble of
preparing a second copy. It shall be identical with the first."

Old Dave, coming in, observed that Miss Swendon's very lips were without
color. But as she went out of the room she halted to move a screen, so as
to protect Laidley from the draught.

She met her father on the stairs. "Do not go up," she said. "David is with
him, and I want you to take me home." ...

Before daylight the next morning Captain Swendon was summoned by David to
his master. A keen north-east wind had caused a sudden change in the
weather, and Mr. Laidley had sunk rapidly, and was now scarcely conscious.

"It is only what I