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Allan Meredith grasped the hand extended towards him, all the more heartily, perhaps, because it was the hand of Miss Verschoyle's brother, as he explained, "I was at the junction, and being so near, thought I would look you up."

"Glad to see you, old fellow. You know this is my sister?"

"Yes; Miss Verschoyle was good enough to show me the way."

She turned to leave them with the words: "Dinner will be ready in an hour, Laurence."

"All right!"

Meredith had time now to notice that there was the same expression of dread in the brother's face he had seen in the sister's, but with a difference. In her face it was simply fear; in his it was this and something worse. Unlike his sister, looking straight at you in her trouble, his eyes were either downcast or averted: shifting uneasily from one object to another. The whole man was changed—it seemed demoralized—since Meredith had last seen him. His very figure had lost its elasticity, and become slouching and cowering.

"What have you been doing with yourself the last three years?" asked Meredith.

"Oh, all sorts of things; going to the bad, chiefly. Not much opportunity for doing that or anything else here, you may think," noticing the direction which the other's eyes took. "No; I have gone farther afield. Spent two years in London; tried my hand at all sorts of things, and failed. I am a failure all round."

"Nonsense, man; if you take that tone you may be."

"There is no other tone to take, now," moodily.

"Give up in that way, with your abilities, and the world before you!"

"It seems easy enough to you, I dare say. It did to me before I tried. There is no need for you to put your theories to the test, or you might find that men occasionally fail, even though they have hands and brains to work with. Some have to go down, and I'm one of them—that's all!"

"That is not Miss Verschoyle's creed, I think?"

"My sister! She has been telling you about the wretched teaching business, I suppose? She, at any rate, is not cursed with the family pride. I can't endure to see her go about giving lessons to the clodhoppers round here. Does no end of drudgery about the house, too."

It had come to this: the sister was working for both; and Verschoyle did not even see what his allowing her to do so meant! "What kind of pride was this?" thought Meredith, his tone showing, perhaps, a little of what was in his mind, as he gravely replied:—

"I can quite understand your objecting to that. You must let your friends use what interests they have to get you into something, Verschoyle."

"It would be of no use; at any rate, until—no necessity for going into that," moodily kicking a stone across the path. What he wanted just then was money, and this was not the man to whom he could turn for that, with his talk about setting to work. How could he say to this man that he had squandered the last remnant of the small property which had come to him; and that they were liable to be turned out of the old home, such as it was, at any moment now—his invalid mother, and the sister who had striven so hard to keep things together—unless he could obtain money to stave off matters, at any rate for a time? Pressure was now being brought to bear upon him, and threats used that, unless he paid off the sum of five hundred pounds—a sum there seemed no possibility of procuring—charges of fraudulent borrowing would be brought against him which he might find it difficult to combat in a court of law; and he was living from hour to hour in fear of arrest.

The Priory itself, and everything it contained of any value, to the last family portrait that hung upon the walls, had been either mortgaged or sold. If a few heirlooms, in the way of carved furniture—a cabinet or what not—had been allowed still to remain, it was to, as long as possible, keep the knowledge of the worst from his mother and sister.

He had, in the first few moments of their meeting, hurriedly speculated as to whether anything could be made out of the other's chance visit; but his hopes, if they amounted to that, had very quickly died as he remembered the past. There had been nothing large-handed or generous, according to his interpretation of the words, in Meredith. He had shown no inclination to part with his money without a quid pro quo, and lived as though he had not a pound to spare, instead of an income of some ten or twelve thousand a year. He had lost his father in his early boyhood, and the property, carefully nursed for him during a long minority, had largely increased.

That, like many who spend little