him, and his
resolve to return it to her a hundred times over; so he wrote for an
advance on royalties of five hundred dollars. To his surprise a check
for that amount, accompanied by a contract, came by return mail. He
cashed the check into five-dollar gold pieces and telephoned Gertrude
that he wanted to see her.

She arrived at the house panting and short of breath from the haste she
had made. Apprehensive of trouble, she had stuffed the few dollars she
possessed into her hand-satchel; and so sure was she that disaster had
overtaken her brother, that she stumbled forward, sobbing, into his arms,
at the same time thrusting the satchel mutely at him.

"I'd have come myself," he said. "But I didn't want a row with Mr.
Higginbotham, and that is what would have surely happened."

"He'll be all right after a time," she assured him, while she wondered
what the trouble was that Martin was in. "But you'd best get a job first
an' steady down. Bernard does like to see a man at honest work. That
stuff in the newspapers broke 'm all up. I never saw 'm so mad before."

"I'm not going to get a job," Martin said with a smile. "And you can
tell him so from me. I don't need a job, and there's the proof of it."

He emptied the hundred gold pieces into her lap in a glinting, tinkling
stream.

"You remember that fiver you gave me the time I didn't have carfare?
Well, there it is, with ninety-nine brothers of different ages but all of
the same size."

If Gertrude had been frightened when she arrived, she was now in a panic
of fear. Her fear was such that it was certitude. She was not
suspicious. She was convinced. She looked at Martin in horror, and her
heavy limbs shrank under the golden stream as though it were burning her.

"It's yours," he laughed.

She burst into tears, and began to moan, "My poor boy, my poor boy!"

He was puzzled for a moment. Then he divined the cause of her agitation
and handed her the Meredith-Lowell letter which had accompanied the
check. She stumbled through it, pausing now and again to wipe her eyes,
and when she had finished, said:-

"An' does it mean that you come by the money honestly?"

"More honestly than if I'd won it in a lottery. I earned it."

Slowly faith came back to her, and she reread the letter carefully. It
took him long to explain to her the nature of the transaction which had
put the money into his possession, and longer still to get her to
understand that th