ad left a
sort of sandy, glistening trace on his cheeks. Apparently he was not
ashamed of them, for the expression with which he met Lapham was that
of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, which was
identical with that of humanity, if not that of justice.

"I some expected," began Rogers, "to find you here----"

"No, you didn't," interrupted Lapham; "you wanted to come here and make
a poor mouth to Mrs. Lapham before I got home."

"I knew that Mrs. Lapham would know what was going on," said Rogers
more candidly, but not more virtuously, for that he could not, "and I
wished her to understand a point that I hadn't put to you at the hotel,
and that I want you should consider. And I want you should consider me
a little in this business too; you're not the only one that's
concerned, I tell you, and I've been telling Mrs. Lapham that it's my
one chance; that if you don't meet me on it, my wife and children will
be reduced to beggary."

"So will mine," said Lapham, "or the next thing to it."

"Well, then, I want you to give me this chance to get on my feet again.
You've no right to deprive me of it; it's unchristian. In our dealings
with each other we should be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying
to Mrs. Lapham before you came in. I told her that if I knew myself, I
should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who
had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obligations to me, and had
patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. I should consider that man's
family, I told Mrs. Lapham."

"Did you tell her that if I went in with you and those fellows, I
should be robbing the people who trusted them?"

"I don't see what you've got to do with the people that sent them here.
They are rich people, and could bear it if it came to the worst. But
there's no likelihood, now, that it will come to the worst; you can see
yourself that the Road has changed its mind about buying. And here am
I without a cent in the world; and my wife is an invalid. She needs
comforts, she needs little luxuries, and she hasn't even the
necessaries; and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! You don't
know in the first place that the Road will ever want to buy; and if it
does, the probability is that with a colony like that planted on its
line, it would make very different terms from what it would with you or
me. These agents are not afraid, and their principals are rich people;
and if there was any loss