ivate papers, some of which were letters written by
my father, and containing remittances which Montague Lami,--or Louis
Langrange, or whatever other name he bore,--of course, never received,
and indignantly declared he believed had never been despatched. This
clerk, whose name was Hesketh, made Lami's acquaintance in South
America, and evidently encouraged him to prefer his claim with greater
assurance, and led him to suppose that any terms he preferred must
certainly be complied with! But I cannot go on, George; the thought of
my poor father struggling through life in this dark conflict rises up
before me, and now I estimate the terrible alternation of hope and fear
in which he must have lived, and how despairingly he must have thought
of a future, when this deep game should be left to such weak hands as
mine. I thought they were cruel words once, in which he spoke of
my unfitness to meet a great emergency--but now I read them very
differently."

"Then do you really think he regarded this claim as rightful and just?"

"I cannot tell that; at moments I have leaned to this impression; but
many things dispose me to believe that he saw or suspected some flaw
that invalidated the claim, but still induced him to silence the
pretension by hush money."

"And you yourself--"

"Don't ask me, my dear friend; do not ask me the question I see is on
your lips. I have no courage to confess, even to you, through how many
moods I pass every day I live. At moments I hope and firmly believe I
rise above every low and interested sentiment, and determine I will do
as I would be done by; I will go through this trial as though it were
a matter apart from me, and in which truth and justice were my only
objects. There are hours in which I feel equal to any sacrifice, and
could say to this man:--There! take it; take all we have in the world.
We have no right to be here; we are beggars and outcasts. And then--I
can't tell how or why--it actually seems as if there was a real Tempter
in one's nature, lying in wait for the moment of doubt and hesitation;
but suddenly, quick as a flash of lightning, a thought would dart
across my mind, and I would begin to canvass this and question that;
not fairly, not honestly, mark you, but casuistically and cunningly; and
worse, far worse than all this--actually hoping, no matter on which side
lay the right, that _we_ should come out victorious."

"But have you not prejudiced your case by precipitancy? The