distinctly, as if he would impress it upon Walter: 'than in forgetting
me, and leaving me to go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed.'

'Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others,'
said Mr Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased
satisfaction, 'I thought it well that you should be told this from the
best authority,' nodding towards his brother. 'You are not likely to
forget it now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go.

Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him,
when, hearing the voices of the brothers again, and also the mention of
his own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and
the door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this position
he could not help overhearing what followed.

'Think of me more leniently, if you can, James,' said John Carker, 'when
I tell you I have had--how could I help having, with my history, written
here'--striking himself upon the breast--'my whole heart awakened by
my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came
here, almost my other self.'

'Your other self!' repeated the Manager, disdainfully.

'Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine,
giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless and
adventurous fancies; and full of the same qualities, fraught with the
same capacity of leading on to good or evil.'

'I hope not,' said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning
in his tone.

'You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is very
deep,' returned the other, speaking (or so Walter thought) as if some
cruel weapon actually stabbed him as he spoke. 'I imagined all this when
he was a boy. I believed it. It was a truth to me. I saw him lightly
walking on the edge of an unseen gulf where so many others walk with
equal gaiety, and from which--'

'The old excuse,' interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. 'So
many. Go on. Say, so many fall.'

'From which ONE traveller fell,' returned the other, 'who set forward,
on his way, a boy like him, and missed his footing more and more, and
slipped a little and a little lower; and went on stumbling still, until
he fell headlong and found himself below a shattered man. Think what I
suffered, when I watched that boy.'

'You have only yourself to thank for it,' returned the brother.

'Only myself,' he assented with a sigh. 'I don't seek to divide th