Chapter 17 - Page 2

I know that you are a staunch friend, but for
all that these papers mean money, and though we may have
been in broken water lately, we are not quite in such
straits as to have to signal to our friends. When we do,
ma'am, there's no one we would look to sooner than to
you."

"Don't be ridiculous!" said the widow. "You know
nothing whatever about it, and yet you stand there laying
down the law. I'll have my way in the matter, and you
shall take the papers, for it is no favor that I am doing
you, but simply a restoration of stolen property."

"How that, ma'am?"

"I am just going to explain, though you might take a
lady's word for it without asking any questions. Now,
what I am going to say is just between you four, and must
go no farther. I have my own reasons for wishing to keep
it from the police. Who do you think it was who struck
me last night, Admiral?"

"Some villain, ma'am. I don't know his name."

"But I do. It was the same man who ruined or tried
to ruin your son. It was my only brother, Jeremiah."

"Ah!"

"I will tell you about him--or a little about him,
for he has done much which I would not care to talk of,
nor you to listen to. He was always a villain,
smooth-spoken and plausible, but a dangerous, subtle
villain all the same. If I have some hard thoughts about
mankind I can trace them back to the childhood which I
spent with my brother. He is my only living relative,
for my other brother, Charles's father, was killed in the
Indian mutiny.

"Our father was rich, and when he died he made a good
provision both for Jeremiah and for me. He knew Jeremiah
and he mistrusted him, however; so instead of giving him
all that he meant him to have he handed me over a part of
it, telling me, with what was almost his dying breath, to
hold it in trust for my brother, and to use it in his
behalf when he should have squandered or lost all that he
had. This arrangement was meant to be a secret between
my father and myself, but unfortunately his words were
overheard by the nurse, and she repeated them afterwards
to my brother, so that he came to know that I held some
money in trust for him. I suppose tobacco will not harm
my head, Doctor? Thank you, then I shall trouble
you for the matches, Ida." She lit a cigarette, and
leaned back upon the pillow, with the blue wreaths
curling from her lips.

"I cannot tell you how often he has attempted to get
that money from me. He has bullied, cajoled, threatened,
coaxed, done all that a man could do. I still held it
with the presentiment that a need for it would come.
When I heard of this villainous business, his flight, and
his leaving his partner to face the storm, above