"You certainly surprise me, father. Perhaps I have done wrong in persuading him to depart. But I always understood that it had been a desperate quarrel between you, and that you had almost taken an oath never to speak to him again." "That's all true enough, and it was a desperate quarrel, and he was tight-fisted just then, and let me drift into bankruptcy, rather than help me. It wasn't brotherly, and I'll never forgive him--never. How was the rascal looking, Sid?" "Like a spare likeness of yourself, sir." "He's taller than I am by a good two inches. We used to cut notches in the sides of all the doors, when we were boys; comparing notes, we called it. I suppose he's very much altered?" "Well, never having seen him before, it is difficult to say. But I have no doubt that there's a difference in him since you met last." "Let me see--it's five-and-twenty years ago, come next February. Twenty-five years to nurse a quarrel, and bear enmity in one's heart against him. What a time!" "He was anxious to tell me the story of that quarrel, sir, but I declined to listen to it." "I hope you weren't rude." "Oh! no, sir." "You have a most unpleasant habit of blurting out anything that comes uppermost. That's your great failing, Sid." "I like to speak out, sir." "And after all, perhaps if we had spoken out less--he and I--we should not have been all these years at arm's length, and you might have been the better for that. There's no telling, things turn out so strangely. And it wasn't so much his refusal to lend me, his only brother, ten thousand pounds--ten drops of water to him--but the way in which he refused, the bitterness of his words, the gall and wormwood instead of brotherly sympathy. I was half mad with my losses, and he stung me with his cool and insolent taunts, and cast me off to beggary--Sid, would you forgive that?" Mr. Hinchford had realized the scene again; through the mists of five-and-twenty years, it shone forth vividly; his cheek flushed, and his hand smote the table heavily, and made the tea things jump again. Sidney cooled him by a few words. "He has been cautious with his money, and you might have shown signs of being reckless with yours, at that time. Possibly you both were heated, and said more than you intended. It don't appear to me to have been a very serious affair, after all." "Did he ever seek me out again, or care whether I was alive or dead, until to-day?--was that kind?" "Did you ever seek _him_ out!" "He was the rich man, and I the poor, Sid." "Ah! that makes a difference!" "What would you have done?" he asked anxiously. "Kept away; not because it was right or politic, but because I inherit my father's pride." "It's an odd legacy, Sid," remarked the father, mournfully.