e is no one
in this world dearer to me than you are. I am a lonely and disappointed
man, without children or ties. I sought out a friend who might be my
brother in life and my heir in death. I found you: be that to me!"

"I am faint and weak," said Glendower, slowly, "and I believe my senses
cannot be clear; but a minute since, and you spoke at length, and with a
terrible distinctness, words which it polluted my very ear to catch,
and now you speak as if you loved me. Will it please you to solve the
riddle?"

"The truth is this," said Crauford: "I knew your pride; I feared you
would not accept a permanent pecuniary aid, even from friendship. I was
driven, therefore, to devise some plan of independence for you. I could
think of no plan but that which I proposed. You speak of it as wicked:
it may be so; but it seemed not wicked to me. I may have formed a
wrong--I own it is a peculiar--system of morals; but it is, at least,
sincere. Judging of my proposal by that system, I saw no sin in it. I
saw, too, much less danger than, in the honesty of my heart, I spoke of.
In a similar distress, I solemnly swear, I myself would have adopted
a similar relief. Nor is this all; the plan proposed would have placed
thousands in your power. Forgive me if I thought your life, and the
lives of those most dear to you, of greater value than these sums to the
persons defrauded, ay, defrauded, if you will: forgive me if I thought
that with these thousands you would effect far more good to the
community than their legitimate owners. Upon these grounds, and on
some others, too tedious now to state, I justified my proposal to my
conscience. Pardon me, I again beseech you: accept my last proposal; be
my partner, my friend, my heir; and forget a scheme never proposed
to you, if I had hoped (what I hope now) that you would accept the
alternative which it is my pride to offer, and which you are not
justified, even by pride, to refuse."

"Great Source of all knowledge!" ejaculated Glendower, scarce audibly,
and to himself. "Supreme and unfathomable God! dost Thou most loathe
or pity Thine abased creatures, walking in their dim reason upon this
little earth, and sanctioning fraud, treachery, crime, upon a principle
borrowed from Thy laws? Oh! when, when will Thy full light of wisdom
travel down to us, and guilt and sorrow, and this world's evil
mysteries, roll away like vapours before the blaze?"

"I do not hear you, my friend," said Crauford. "Spe