fact, that the whole thing would come to an
end if this payment to old Rubb were stopped.

"Tom," said she, in the middle of it all, when her head was aching
with figures, "if it will comfort you, and enable you to put all
these things away, you may know that I will divide everything I have
with Sarah."

He assured her that her kindness did comfort him; but he hoped better
than that; he still thought that something better might be arranged
if she would only go on with her task. So she went on painfully
toiling through figures.

"Sam drew them up on purpose for you, yesterday afternoon," said he.

"Who did it?" she asked.

"Samuel Rubb."

He then went on to declare that she might accept all Samuel Rubb's
figures as correct.

She was quite willing to accept them, and she strove hard to
understand them. It certainly did seem to her that when her money was
borrowed somebody must have known that the promised security would
not be forthcoming; but perhaps that somebody was old Rubb, whom, as
she did not know him, she was quite ready to regard as the villain in
the play that was being acted. Her own money, too, was a thing of the
past. That fault, if fault there had been, was condoned; and she was
angry with herself in that she now thought of it again.

"And now," said her brother, as soon as she had put the papers back,
and declared that she understood them. "Now I have something to say
to you which I hope you will hear without being angry." He raised
himself on his bed as he said this, doing so with difficulty and
pain, and turning his face upon her so that he could look into her
eyes. "If I didn't know that I was dying I don't think that I could
say it to you."

"Say what, Tom?"

She thought of what most terrible thing it might be possible that
he should have to communicate. Could it be that he had got hold, or
that Rubb and Mackenzie had got hold, of all her fortune, and turned
it into unprofitable oilcloth? Could they in any way have made her
responsible for their engagements? She wished to trust them; she
tried to avoid suspicion; but she feared that things were amiss.

"Samuel Rubb and I have been talking of it, and he thinks it had
better come from me," said her brother.

"What had better come?" she asked.

"It is his proposition, Margaret." Then she knew all about it, and
felt great relief. Then she knew all about it, and let him go on till
he had spoken his speech.

"God knows how far he may be in