"But what am I to do with these now?" he cried in bewilderment.

"You will put them in a safe place, or get a friend to do so, and, if

you do your duty, you will go to your wife and beg her pardon for having

even for an instant thought of leaving her."

The Admiral passed his hand over his rugged forehead. "This is very good

of you, ma'am," said he, "very good and kind, and 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."

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"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's 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.




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