“I knew you would not fail me, Stephen.  To-morrow will be a turning-point in both our lives.  Circumstances have conspired to help me in my plan.”

He began to stammer.  The other looked at him quietly, inquiringly.

“You remember what I told you on Tuesday?” more hastily.  “I have dealt heavily in stocks lately; it needs one blow more, and our future is secure for life.  Yours and mine, I mean,—­yours and mine, Stephen.  This paper old Frazier carries,—­he Is going to New York with it.  If I can keep it out of the market for a week, my speculation is assured,—­I can realize half a million, at least.  Frazier is an old man, weak:  he crosses the Narrows to-morrow morning on horseback.”

He stopped abruptly, playing with a shell on the mantel-shelf.

“I understand,” in a dry voice; “you want him robbed; and my hands came at the right nick of time.”

“Pish! you use coarse words.  A man’s brain must be distempered to call that robbery; the paper, as I said, is neither money nor its equivalent.”

There was a silence of some moments.

“I must have it,” his eye growing fierce.  “You could take it and leave the man unhurt.  I could have done it myself, but he’s an old man, I want him left unhurt.  If I had done it—­Well,” chewing his lips, “it would not have been convenient for him to have gone on with that story.  He knows me.  Is the affair quite plain now?”

Yarrow nodded slowly, looking in the fire.

“If I were not strong enough to-morrow, what then?”

“I will be with you,—­near.  I must have the paper.  He is an old Shylock, after all,” with a desperate carelessness.  “His soul would not weigh heavily against me, if it were let out.”

Yarrow passed his hand over his face; it was colorless.  Yet he looked bewildered.  The bare thought of murder was not clear to him yet.

“Drink some wine, Stephen,” said his brother, pouring out a goblet for himself.  “I carry my own drinking-apparatus.  This Sherry”—­

Yarrow tasted it, and put down the glass.

“I was cheated in it, eh?”

“Yes, you were.”

“Your palate was always keener than mine.  I”—­

His mouth looked blue and cold under his whiskers:  then they both stood vacantly silent, while the woman sewed.

“Tut! we will look at the matter practically, as business-men,” said Soule at last, affecting a gruff, hearty tone, and walking about,—­but was silent there.

The convict did not answer.  No sound but the rough wind without blowing the drifted snow and pebbles from the asphalt roof against the frosted panes, and the angry fire of bitumen within breaking into clefts of blue and scarlet flame, thrusting its jets of fierce light out from its cage:  impatient, it may be, of this convict, this sickly, shrivelled bit of humanity standing there; wondering the nauseated life in his nostrils or soul claimed yet its share of God’s