gh all the time my heart felt like lead.

"That evening Jasper sent for me again. His manner now was changed. The
wildness and despair had left it. He was his old, cool, collected self.
He was in the sort of mood when he always had an ascendency over me--the
sort of mood when he showed that wonderful business faculty for which I
could not but admire him.

"'Sit down, John,' he said, 'I have a great deal to say to you. There is
a plan in my head. If you will agree to act with me in it, we may yet be
saved.'

"Thinking of my Constance lying so ill upstairs, my heart leaped up at
these words.

"'What is your plan?' I said. 'I can stay with you for some time. I can
listen as long as you like.'

"'You hate poverty?' said Jasper.

"'Yes,' I said, thinking of Constance, 'I hate it.'

"'If you will consent to my scheme; if you will consent before you leave
this room, we need not sink with Cooper, Cooper and Bennett.'

"'I will listen to you,' I said.

"'You have always been so absorbed lately in your wife,' continued
Jasper, 'that you have, I really believe, forgotten our father's death:
his funeral was last Thursday. Of course you could not attend it. After
the funeral I read the will.'

"'Yes,' I said, 'I had really forgotten my father's will. He left us
money?' I said. 'I am glad; it will keep us from absolute want.
Constance need not be hungry after all.'

"My brother looked at me.

"'A little money has been left to us,' he said, 'but so little that it
must go with the rest. In the general crash those few thousands must
also go. John, you remember when our father took that very large sum out
of the business, he promised that we should be his heirs. It was a loan
for his lifetime.'

"'He had not married then,' I said.

"'No,' answered Jasper, 'he had not married. Now that he has married he
has forgotten all but this second wife. He has left her, with the
exception of a few thousands, the whole of that fine property. In short,
he has left her a sum of money which is to realize an income of twelve
hundred a year.'

"'Yes,' I said, wearily.

"Jasper looked at me very hard. I returned his gaze.

"'That money, if left to us, would save the firm. _Quite absolutely save
the firm in this present crisis_,' he said, slowly and emphatically.

"'Yes,' I said again. I was so innocent, so far from what I since
became, at that moment, that I did not in the least understand my
brother. 'The money is not ours,' I said