f manner.

"How do you know?" cried Anthony.

"Why do you carry so much money about with you in bags, uncle?"

"Hear it, my dear." He simulated miser's joy.

"Ain't that music? Talk of operas! Hear that; don't it talk? don't it
chink? don't it sing?" He groaned "Oh, Lord!" and fell back.

This transition from a state of intensest rapture to the depths of pain
alarmed her.

"Nothing; it's nothing." Anthony anticipated her inquiries. "They bags
is so heavy."

"Then why do you carry them about?"

"Perhaps it's heart disease," said Anthony, and grinned, for he knew the
soundness of his health.

"You are very pale, uncle."

"Eh? you don't say that?"

"You are awfully white, dear uncle."

"I'll look in the glass," said Anthony. "No, I won't." He sank back in
his chair. "Rhoda, we're all sinners, ain't we? All--every man and woman
of us, and baby, too. That's a comfort; yes, it is a comfort. It's a
tremendous comfort--shuts mouths. I know what you're going to say--some
bigger sinners than others. If they're sorry for it, though, what then?
They can repent, can't they?"

"They must undo any harm they may have done. Sinners are not to repent
only in words, uncle."

"I've been feeling lately," he murmured.

Rhoda expected a miser's confession.

"I've been feeling, the last two or three days," he resumed.

"What, uncle?"

"Sort of taste of a tremendous nice lemon in my mouth, my dear, and
liked it, till all of a sudden I swallowed it whole--such a gulp! I felt
it just now. I'm all right."

"No, uncle," said Rhoda: "you are not all right: this money makes you
miserable. It does; I can see that it does. Now, put those bags in my
hands. For a minute, try; it will do you good. Attend to me; it will.
Or, let me have them. They are poison to you. You don't want them."

"I don't," cried Anthony. "Upon my soul, I don't. I don't want 'em. I'd
give--it is true, my dear, I don't want 'em. They're poison."

"They're poison to you," said Rhoda; "they're health, they're life
to me. I said, 'My uncle Anthony will help me. He is not--I know his
heart--he is not a miser.' Are you a miser, uncle?"

Her hand was on one of his bags. It was strenuously withheld: but while
she continued speaking, reiterating the word "miser," the hold relaxed.
She caught the heavy bag away, startled by its weight.

He perceived the effect produced on her, and cried; "Aha! and I've been
carrying two of 'em--two!"

Rhoda panted in her exci