"A man is no better than the company he keeps. Go with rascals and you
will be counted one of them. Yes, and so you ought to be. I am ashamed
of you!"

"I did not ask you to come into my company. I did not want you. It was
most interfering of you. Yes, John, I call it impudently interfering. I
gave way to you this time to prevent a police scene, but I will never do
it again! Never!"

"You will never go into such a den of iniquity again. Never! Mind that!
The dead and the living both will block your way. We Hattons have been
honest men in all our generations. Sons of the soil, taking our living
from the land on which we lived in some way or other--never before from
dirty cards in dirty hands and shuffled about in roguery, treachery, and
robbery. I feel defiled by breathing the same air with such a crowd of
card-sharpers and scoundrels."

"I say they were good honest gentlemen. Sir Thomas Leland was there,
and----"

"I don't care if they were all princes. They were a bad lot, and theft
and cards and brandy were written large on every sickly, wicked, white
face of them. O Harry, how dared you disgrace your family by keeping
such company?"

"No one but a Methodist preacher is respectable in your eyes, John.
Everyone in Hatton knew the Naylors, yet you gave them the same bad
names."

"And they deserved all and more than they got. They gambled with horses
instead of cards. They ran nobler animals than themselves to death for
money--and money for which neither labor nor its equivalent is given is
dishonest money and the man who puts it in his pocket is a thief and
puts hell in his pocket with it."

"John, if I were you I would use more gentlemanly language."

"O Harry! Harry! My dear, dear brother! I am speaking now not only for
myself but for mother and Lucy and your lovely children. Who or what is
driving you down this road of destruction? I have left home at a hard
time to help you. Come to me, Harry! Come and sit down beside me as you
always have done. Tell me what is wrong, my brother!"

Harry was walking angrily about the room, but at these words his eyes
filled with tears. He stood still and looked at John and when John
stretched out his arms, he could not resist the invitation. The next
moment his head was on John's breast and John's arm was across Harry's
shoulders and John was saying such words as the wounded heart loves to
hear. Then Harry told all his trouble and all his temptation and John
freely forg