you are but an
intruder,--unasked, unwished for!"

"Bitter words to part with! but hear me, sir. He who has joined his lot
to mine should not pay the penalty of my fault. Against him you can bear
no malice; he at least does not merit the reproach you have cast on me.
Will you see him,--may he speak with you?"

"Whenever he pleases,--provided it be but once. I will not be
importuned."

"You will bear in mind, sir, that he is a man of birth and station, and
that to his ears words of insult are a stranger."

"I will treat him with all the deference I owe to his rank, and to the
part he has performed towards myself," said Fagan, slowly.

"It were, perhaps, better, then, that you should not meet?"

"It were, perhaps, better so!"

"Good-bye, sir. I have no more to say."

"Good-bye, madam. Tell Raper I want to speak to him, as you pass out."

With Raper the interview was briefer still. Fagan dryly informed his old
follower that he no longer needed his services. And although Joe
heard the words as a criminal might have listened to those of his last
sentence, he never uttered a syllable. Fagan was brief, though bitter.
He reproached him with the long years he had sheltered him beneath his
roof, and reviled him for ingratitude! He spoke of him as one who
had eaten the bread of idleness, and repaid an existence of ease by
treachery. Once, and only once, did the insulting language he lavished
on him seem to sting him beyond further endurance. It was when Fagan
said:

"You think me in your power, sir; you fancy that amid that mass of
rubbish and confusion my affairs have been involved in, that you alone
can be the guide. But I tell you here now that were it even so, I 'd
rather heap them on the fire, and stand forth a beggar to the world,
than harbor within my doors a man like you!"

The struggle that it cost poor Joe to hear this, without reply, was
great; but a sense of the deference that throughout a long life he had
ever rendered to his master, overpowered all considerations of self. He
indeed felt that he had been wronged; he knew all the injustice of the
reproach; but he also bethought him of the many years in which that
house had been his home, and that hearth his own. He was not one to
remember what he had rendered in return, nor think of the long existence
of toil by which he had earned his livelihood. The settled humility
which was the basis of his whole character made him esteem himself as
one whose station