A strange, sad expression flitted across the invalid's face. He turned completely round and peered into the face of his companion. Then stretching out both feverish white hands, he cried out: "Yes, thank God! Elersley, it's you; you have come just in time." "Open the window and let me have a breath of fresh air," said the sick man after their greetings were over. "I have something to tell you that is weighing me down with grief, and promise me, dear old fellow, that you will leave no stone unturned to do the right things, that I will point out to you presently." "If it is in human power, Bencroft, how can you doubt the eagerness of one old chum to serve another?" "But I have done an awful wrong and you may loathe me and desert me when you see me self-condemned." The despairing tones of the weak voice touched every sympathetic chord in the heart of his listener. "I don't care what you may have done," he cried, enthusiastically, "let me help you all I can, you will not ask an impossibility I know." The invalid heaved a labored sigh, and began his story. "If I knew I had yet a year of health and life before me, I would not trouble any one to undo the black and dishonorable knot, that these guilty hands have tied, but I know too well that but little strength is left me. To begin at the beginning, Guy," he said, looking eagerly into the kind face of his listener, "boys make foolish attachments at school, that they sometimes regret all their lives. This, as you know, was my misfortune. Whatever diabolical attraction there was in that one man for me, I never could tell. All you fellows ridiculed me for it, but some evil fascination, though I did not so qualify it at that time, held me to him in spite of myself. The rest of you, wiser than I, learned to look upon his handsome face and polished manners as a clever mask, but I was blinded and could not see like the rest. You know how many foolish acts I did during those college years to serve him. Oh! if I had only known then that I was laying the foundation of my future misery with my own willing hands," and the speaker's large eyes flashed with a hatred and defiance that made his plain face look grand and handsome. "I left school a year before my father died, and I had just become initiated in his business at the time of his demise. I admit it was rather a heavy undertaking for one so young as I was then, to continue the extensive business my father had so successfully carried on for years.