"Which was paid," cried Walter, excitedly,
"which was paid to the uttermost farthing!"

"It was; but not until after a considerable
delay that was highly inconvenient to me.
However, I waited patiently, because you begged and
prayed that I wouldn't split about the affair to
your governor. I could have got my money
directly by a hint to him. For he was proud,
like your dearly beloved brother, and would
have given ten times the money to hush up a
good many tilings that I could have told him.
Is that the truth, or not?"

Walter bowed his face on his trembling
hands, and merely replied by a low moan. It
was piteous to see how weak he was, how
broken and abject. His jaunty, self-satisfied
ease, the fresh brightness of his fair boyish
face, were all gone.

"Well," pursued Alfred Trescott, for it was
he, "I needn't recapitulate all that passed in
Dublin. Those were good times for both of
us; and if you did buy your experience at a
tolerably expensive rate, why you had your fun
for the money. And money was plenty enough
with you then. Then came the smash at
Hammerham, and —— "

"Why, in the name of all the devils, do you
torment me in this way?" broke in Walter,
dashing down his clenched fist on the table.
"What's the good of talking about all that?
It's past and gone, and nothing that you or I,
or any one else, can say will avail to alter it."

"Quite so," replied Alfred, coolly, at the
same time dropping his handsome eyelashes
over his eyes, with a half-suppressed smile.
"All that cannot be altered, as you justly
observed. But, though it cannot be altered,
I don't choose that it shall be altogether
forgotten, especially when you ask what you have
to be grateful for. It's necessary to refresh
your memory a little, do you see? When we
met again in London, was it I who sought you
out, or you who sought me? In addition to
your other accomplishments, you had imbibed
a taste for cards. Did I, or did I not, say to
you that I thought card-playing an expensive
amusement for a clerk at a hundred a year, or
whatever your wages were?"

Walter rocked himself to and fro in his chair
as though he were suffering bodily pain. He
answered, wilhout looking up, "I know very
well what you said, and how you said it. You
know that it was impossible for a fellow of any
spirit to—to —— "

"To refrain from doing what he liked? Ah!
that Las been the case with a good many fellows
of spirit, I believe. However, I gave you good
advice; and if you were too great a fool to follow
it, I couldn't help that, you know."

"It was you who urged me to leave the rest
of them, and go into lodgings by myself. That
was the beginning of it all. If you had let me
alone, I might have gone on steadily enough in
time."

Tears of bitter humiliation and mortified pride
were standing in the wretched boy's eyes as
he spoke. Always weak and undisciplined in
temper, his health had been latterly so undermined
by dissipation and ceaseless fretful
repinings at his lot, that he had scarcely more
self-control than a child. Alfred threw
himself back in his chair with a short mocking
laugh.

"Bah! I urged you! Are you a baby?
I thought it was you who first said that you
were tired of living under the rule of that
precious brother of yours. It was a little too
laughable. I wonder he didn't tie a string to
your leg!"

"I have cut the string now, once and for
ever," said Walter. "I shall never go back
and face them all. After all Clem has said and
done — oh, when I think of his face that Sunday
night when I came home " — he hesitated, and
Alfred coolly supplied the word — "drunk, eh?"
"When I saw him and my sister standing there
in the passage, I felt as if I should have been
glad to drop down dead rather than face them."

"Did he blackguard you?"

"No. He didn't say one word, but just
stood aside to let me pass, and looked at me
—oh, that look was the worst of all! I would
sooner he had said anything than have looked
at me like that."

"Ah, the old game. Trying to overawe you
with his superior virtue. Humbug! But why
the devil you ever stood his hectoring airs I
can't understand."

"Clem has been good to me, too. But he—
he expects too much of a fellow. If you ain't
quite up to his mark, he always seems, somehow,
to have such a contempt for you."

"Really! " sneered Alfred Trescott. " He
must be a paragon himself, to be able to look
down so magnificently on the rest of the world.
You'd better go home, like a good boy, and beg
pardon, and take your whipping pretty, and try
to profit by such a moral example."

"Never! " said Walter again, with a sort of
nervous tremor. " I can't do it. I know what
Clement is. He wouldn't desert me, but he'd
go to M'Culloch and tell him that I must be
withdrawn from the bank, and he'd talk in his
stern way about not venturing to make other
people responsible for my good conduct any
more, and he'd make me go, cap in hand, to
some d—d tradesman fellow or other to try
for a situation. He told me, once, that if I
could get no other honest work to do, I ought
to take a broom in my hand and sweep a
crossing."

"Affectionate brother!" said Alfred, scoffingly.

"Well, upon my soul, I believe he'd do it
himself."

"But, not possessing any taste or talent for
crossing-sweeping on the whole, you don't mean
to return to the bosom of your family."

"I can't do it, I tell you. When I think of
all the things that will have come out, now, in
this day or two that I've been away, I feel that
I can't face it. You don't know what it would
be."

"My dear fellow, don't distress yourself to