all upon Filmer. Drew tried to speak; to say the right thing, but he
merely smiled feebly and rose unsteadily to his feet.

"I wouldn't blame you if you--cut me after this, Drew, but it's got to
be said. It's--your--sister."

"My--sister? Connie?" Drew was never so surprised and astounded in his
life before.

"Connie?" he gasped again. "Connie?"

"If--if--I was what I might be? If I come into my own, Drew, do you
think she--could care--for me?"

"How under heaven can I tell?" Drew said slowly; "she has never--how
could she? shown--" he paused.

"How indeed, could she?" Filmer laughed a hard, bitter laugh.

"It would be a poor sort of reformation, Jock--" Drew was getting
command of himself--"if it were only to get--her! You've got to get
yourself, old man, before you'd dare ask any woman to care for you. I
often think the best of us ask a good deal--on trust; but at least a man
must know himself before he has a right to expect even--faith."

"Oh! I've worked all that out, Drew, I've been to Hillcrest to talk the
beginnings over with a little lawyer fellow who's had my confidence all
along. I'm going back where I fell, Drew, in the start. I'm going back
there where the loss of her--the mother's laugh and song--will grip the
hardest and where the antidote will be the easiest to get. I'm going to
take only enough of the governor's money to keep me out of the filth of
the gutter until I can climb on to the curb or--go to the sewer, see?
But always there is going to be your sister above me. Just remember
that--and if you can help her to think of me, once in--a while--"

"Filmer, until you climb up, you must not ask me to hold even one
thought of my sister's for you; except--" and here Drew looked frankly
in the anxious face--"except as the good fellow of--our Solitude."

"Thank you! That's all I meant. And if I pull up--and stay up--she, not
I, will know how to use the money. She's got the heart that can reach
down to the suffering, and hold little dying kids on her breast. If I go
under, Drew, the money is going to her--anyway."

"Filmer!"

"That's all right, Drew. I know what I'm about. She'll brighten up all
the dark places--and remember me in that way if in no other."

Long the two men looked at each other; then Drew extended his hand. Jock
took it in a firm grip.

"Good night, Filmer, and God be with you!"

"I'm ready to start, I'll tramp back with you as far as the bungalow."

Jock dashed the crumbli