"To have one to spare is what you mean to say. If a man is a fool who wants a fiver, I know a very clever fellow, who is a great fool always. But he can't get it out of me. _Nulla bona._" "George," said my brother in that slurring tone, which means that any care of pronunciation would be wasted on the muff before you; "you can have some, if you like. But don't let me force it upon you, George. There are several other fellows after me." "In that case," I answered, simply for his benefit not my own--for I did not expect to see anything worth counting; "that old tobacco-jar is empty; out with it, and let me put the top on. Is it from the sneezers, and the Local Board?" "Who ever got a penny from a Local Board? If I could invent a machine to do that, I should beat the great man in America. My sneezers, as you call them, will be household words, when reason has a voice in sanitation. But this new discovery is of a million times the value, because it is for the destruction of mankind. It will kill a thousand men, before they can call upon the Lord; and there will be no pieces left for the Devil. I had scruples at first, because of the wholesale carnage, and some of the victims might deserve to live; but the kindest-hearted man alive, and the chairman of five or six humane societies, ridicules that objection, and has taken shares. At the first blush it may seem too strong a measure; but when you know that it puts an end to war, you are reconciled to a few harsh moments." There is a certain sound, enjoyed more often by bankers and brewers than by delvers of the earth, a silken harmony of thoughtful notes, silvery and sensitive, suggestive also of golden tones yet mellower. Seldom, alas! do we find it thrilling through the music of our spheres. Once heard, it is never forgotten; and now I heard it murmuring in my tobacco-jar, as it flowed from the lyre of my brother's fingers. "Hold hard!" I shouted. "What the deuce are you about? You villain, you have been forging! I was sure you'd come to that. But I doubt whether even Free-Trade makes it honest." "Nice gratitude," he answered, "when it is all for you. One would think that you alone had the gift of making money. But it would take you a long time to make that, my boy. Now help yourself. Don't be shy." "Harold, you have worked hard for this." As I spoke, I regarded my elder brother with respectful sympathy, such as he never had inspired until now; "and I cannot perceive that I have any right to make a hole in your hard earnings. Do you think that I would do anything so mean? But how much do you suppose you have dropped into that jar? If you heartily desire to make me a little present--" "Perhaps there may be about two-fifty there. They got up a company, you see, to work my patent Slaughter-ball. That makes everything straightforward. The investors throw in, to get other people's money, and it is their own look-out about keeping their own. But peg away, George; peg away."