head was
reeling. Right and wrong seemed confused. I said to myself, My brain is
so confused with grief and perplexity that it is no matter what Jasper
says just now, for I shall not understand him. But I found to my
surprise, almost to my horror, that I understood with startling
clearness every word. This was Jasper's plan. There were three trustees
to the will; I was one, my brother Jasper another, a third was a man by
the name of Alexander Wilson. He was brother to my father's second wife.
This Alexander Wilson I had never seen. Jasper had seen him once. He
described him to me as a tall and powerful man with red hair. 'He is the
other trustee,' said my brother, 'and he is dead.'

"'Dead!' I said, starting.

"'Yes, he is without doubt dead; here is an account of his death.'

"Jasper then opened an Australian paper and showed me the name, also
the full account of a man who answered in all particulars to the
Alexander Wilson named as a third trustee. Jasper then proceeded to
unfold yet further his scheme.

"That trustee being dead, we were absolute masters of the situation, we
could appropriate that money. The widow knew nothing yet of her
husband's will; she need never know. The sum meant for her was, under
existing circumstances, much too large. She should not want, she should
have abundance. But we too should not want. Were our father living he
would ask us to do this. We should save ourselves and the great house of
Harman Brothers. In short, to put the thing in plain language, we
should, by stealing the widow's money, save ourselves. By being
faithless to our most solemn trust, we could keep the filthy lucre. I
will not say how I struggled. I did struggle for a day; in the evening I
yielded. I don't excuse myself in the very least. In the evening I fell
as basely as a man could fall. I believe in my fall I sank even lower
than Jasper. I said to him, 'I cannot bear poverty, it will kill
Constance, and Constance must not die; but you must manage everything. I
can go into no details; I can never, never as long as I live, see that
widow and child. You must see them, you must settle enough, abundance on
them, but never mention their names to me. I can do the deed, but the
victims must be dead to me.'

"To all this Jasper promised readily enough. He promised and acted. All
went, outwardly, smoothly and well; there was no hitch, no outward flaw,
no difficulty, the firm was saved; none but we two knew how nearly it
h