"I cannot tell you how often he has attempted to get that money from me.
He has bullied, cajoled, threatened, coaxed, done all that a man could
do. I still held it with the presentiment that a need for it would come.
When I heard of this villainous business, his flight, and his leaving
his partner to face the storm, above all that my old friend had been
driven to surrender his income in order to make up for my brother's
defalcations, I felt that now indeed I had a need for it. I sent in
Charles yesterday to Mr. McAdam, and his client, upon hearing the facts
of the case, very graciously consented to give back the papers, and
to take the money which he had advanced. Not a word of thanks to me,
Admiral. I tell you that it was very cheap benevolence, for it was all
done with his own money, and how could I use it better?
"I thought that I should probably hear from him soon, and I did. Last
evening there was handed in a note of the usual whining, cringing tone.
He had come back from abroad at the risk of his life and liberty, just
in order that he might say good-bye to the only sister he ever had, and
to entreat my forgiveness for any pain which he had caused me. He would
never trouble me again, and he begged only that I would hand over to him
the sum which I held in trust for him. That, with what he had already,
would be enough to start him as an honest man in the new world, when
he would ever remember and pray for the dear sister who had been his
savior. That was the style of the letter, and it ended by imploring me
to leave the window-latch open, and to be in the front room at three in
the morning, when he would come to receive my last kiss and to bid me
farewell.
"Bad as he was, I could not, when he trusted me, betray him. I said
nothing, but I was there at the hour. He entered through the window,
and implored me to give him the money. He was terribly changed; gaunt,
wolfish, and spoke like a madman. I told him that I had spent the money.
He gnashed his teeth at me, and swore it was his money. I told him that
I had spent it on him. He asked me how. I said in trying to make him an
honest man, and in repairing the results of his villainy. He shrieked
out a curse, and pulling something out of the breast of his coat--a
loaded stick, I think--he struck me with it, and I remembered nothing
more."