traces of refinement. He dropped into the one easy chair, and Douglas
watched him half fascinated.

"You have become" he continued, leaning his head upon his bony fingers,
"a man of letters, I believe. I congratulate you. You have stepped
into the whirlpool from which no man can retrace his steps. Yet even
this is better, is it not, than the Methodism? You were not cut out, I
think, for a parson."

"Never mind me and my affairs," Douglas said hoarsely. "I want to have
nothing to do with you. I wish you no harm--only I beg that you will
leave this room, and that I may never see you again."

The newcomer did not move.

"That is all very well, Mr. Guest," he said, "but I fancy that last
time we met it was as fellow-criminals, eh?"

"We were both trying to rob your father," Douglas answered slowly, "but
there was a difference. The money I wanted, and took was mine--ay, and
more besides. He had no right to withhold it. As for you--"

"Well, he was my father, and of his own will he had never given me a
halfpenny in my life. Surely I had a right to something?"

"Let the robbery go," Douglas said, leaning across the table. "It's
true that I took but my own--but no more of that. At least I never
raised my hand against him."

The man in the chair beat with the tips of his fingers upon the table by