rother, or of twenty brothers.

The morrow--a blustering day of late March found him again at that
alehouse at Penycumwick in the company of Jasper Leigh. A course had
occurred to him, as the only course now possible. Last night his brother
had muttered something of going to Killigrew with his proofs since
Rosamund refused to receive him. Through Killigrew he would reach her,
he had said; and he would yet see her on her knees craving his pardon
for the wrong she had done him, for the cruelty she had shown him.

Lionel knew that Killigrew was absent from home just then; but he
was expected to return by Easter, and to Easter there was but a week.
Therefore he had little time in which to act, little time in which to
execute the project that had come into his mind. He cursed himself for
conceiving it, but held to it with all the strength of a weak nature.

Yet when he came to sit face to face with Jasper Leigh in that little
inn-parlour with the scrubbed table of plain deal between them, he
lacked the courage to set his proposal forth. They drank sherry sack
stiffly laced with brandy by Lionel's suggestion, instead of the more
customary mulled ale. Yet not until he had consumed the best part of a
pint of it did Lionel feel himself heartened to broaching his loathsome
business. Through his head hummed the words his brother had said some
time ago when first the name of Jasper Leigh had passed between
them--"a desperate adventurer ripe for anything. So the price be high
enough you may buy him body and soul." Money enough to buy Jasper Leigh
was ready to Lionel's hand; but it was Sir Oliver's money--the money
that was placed at Lionel's disposal by his half-brother's open-handed
bounty. And this money he was to employ for Oliver's utter ruin! He
cursed himself for a filthy, contemptible hound; he cursed the foul
fiend that whispered such suggestions into his mind; he knew himself,
despised himself and reviled himself until he came to swear to be strong
and to go through with whatever might await him sooner than be guilty of
such a baseness; the next moment that same resolve would set him
shuddering again as he viewed the inevitable consequences that must
attend it.

Suddenly the captain set him a question, very softly, that fired the
train and blew all his lingering self-resistance into shreds.

"You'll ha' borne my warning to Sir Oliver?" he asked, lowering his
voice so as not to be overheard by the vintner who was stirrin