y entering the room.
Men came to see him,--insisted on seeing him,--and she would send me
to the bank for gold and pay their claims and bid them go. At last he
was able to walk out with that awful slash on his thin white face.
Once then he met and cursed me, but I did not mind, I had acted only
to save mother. How could I suppose that her assailant was her own
brother? Then finally with sobs and tears she told me the story, how
he had been their mother's darling, how wild and reckless was his
youth, how her mother's last thought seemed to be for him, and how on
her knees she, my own mother, promised to take care of poor Freddie
and shield him from every ill, and this promise she repeated to me,
bidding me help her keep it and to conceal as far as I could her
brother's misdeeds. For a few months things went a little better.
Uncle Fred got a commission in a California regiment towards the close
of the war and was sent down to Arizona. Then came more tears and
trouble. I couldn't understand it all then, but I do now. Uncle Fred
was gambling again, drawing on her for means to meet his losses. The
old home went under the hammer, and we moved down to San Diego, where
father had once invested and had left a little property. And then came
the news that Uncle Fred had been dismissed, all on account of drink
and gambling and misappropriation of funds. Miss Harvey knows all
about this, lieutenant, for mother told her and had reason to. And
next came forgery, and we were stranded. We heard that he had gone
after that with a wagon-train to Texas. I got employment on a ranch,
and then mother married again, married a man who had long befriended
us and who could give her a comfortable home. She is now Mrs. Malcomb
Bland, of San Francisco, and Mr. Bland offered to take me into his
store, but I loved the open air and independence. Mr. Bland and Mr.
Harvey had business relations, and when Uncle Fred was next heard from
he was 'starving to death,' he said, 'actually dying.' He wrote to
mother from Yuma. Mother wired me to go to him at once, and I did. He
was considerably out at elbows, but in no desperate need yet. Just
then Mr. Harvey offered him a good salary to take charge of his
freight-train. We all knew how that must have been brought about, and
I felt that it would only be a matter of time when he would rob his
new employer. He did; was discharged, but Mr. Bland made the amount
good, and the matter was hushed up. Then he drove stage