n his
knees beside the bed and buried his face in the covers, as if he would
fain conceal the too vivid pleasure expressed in his features.

A hand was laid upon his shoulder. He started, looked up, and met the
gaze of Arthur.

"Ah, yes, Arthur, I had forgotten you. How did you manage? What could
you do?"

"Finding you did not return, I suspected something had occurred, and
dispatched Jeff after the nearest physician. He pronounced Guly's wound
not dangerous, but recommended quiet for a day or so. You see he is
doing nicely; he wasn't hurt much after all. As Quirk says, he is such a
weakly affair, that it takes nothing at all to knock the senses out of
him."

"Then you have had a conference with Quirk, this morning, have you?"
returned Wilkins, coldly. "Well, your very humane judgment is worthy of
both of you; you can now go to your counter, sir, if you like, or seek
rest if you are fatigued, as you choose."

Arthur took his place in the store. Aided by Quirk's slurs and
inuendoes, as soon as he saw Guly recovering he had experienced another
revulsion of feeling, and really cherished a sentiment of anger, when he
remembered that he had allowed himself to be so "bullied," as Quirk
expressed it, by a stripling so weak and "curdy" as Gulian. He convinced
Arthur, with his reckless reasoning, that in gambling for a little
"innocent amusement," there in the store, they were but doing what all
young men with any idea of fashionable pleasure did, and that Wilkins
had no right to exert over them the authority which he did. That, as
for Guly's wound, it was Wilkins' fault he had received it, and,
altogether, they ought to have fought it out before yielding so easily.
But though he had succeeded in leading Arthur to think that Guly was
meddlesome and intrusive, he could not succeed in rousing his ire
towards Wilkins; for Arthur was not so blind as to be unable to see that
Wilkins was his truest friend. Still, there was a restless and undefined
uneasiness in his breast, a fancy that his dignity had been insulted,
yet so vague was the impression left on his mind by the wily Quirk, that
he could scarcely decide from whom he had suffered it, Wilkins or Guly;
but with that unnatural perversity which sometimes enthrals the human
heart, he was more than half inclined to think it was his brother, and
cherished an indignant feeling against him, which even the memory of his
pallid face as he lay before him the night before, with the b