“I can't make it out,” Nelson heard him muttering. “I'm afraid of it. It may be a trick, and yet what trick could anybody play on a man in the hole I'm in? _Four thousand?_” He was looking first at the check and then at his caller. “Four thousand would save me from actual ruin--it would make me comfortable for life. I can't believe you mean to give it to me--really _give_ it. The world isn't built that way. It would be very unbecoming in me to doubt you, to impugn your motives, sir, but I'm all upset. The doctors say my mind is affected. One lawyer, a sharper, suggested that I could get out of this debt by claiming that I was not mentally responsible when I signed the papers, but that wouldn't work. I knew mighty well what I was doing. Now, on top of it all, here you come--_you_ of all living men--and, in so many plain English words--offer to give me a thousand more than the debt. Sir, I don't want to be impolite, but I simply can't believe that you mean it.” Greatly moved, the young man put his hands on the old man's shoulders and gently pressed him down into his chair; then he got another and sat close to him. “Try to look at this thing calmly,” he said. “In the first place, you don't understand me. You are not a relative of mine by law, but by blood you are the only one I ever saw. You are the brother of the man who gave me life--such as it is--and, for aught I know, you may even resemble him. I have been in great trouble over the revelations you made recently, but all that has burned itself to a cinder within me, and I have determined to go back up there in the mountains and face it. But that isn't all. Certain investments I have made in the past are turning out money in the most prodigal manner. The amount I am offering you is a mere trifle to what I have made in one single transfer of property to-day. I sincerely want you to take it. It would give me great joy to help you, and, if you refuse, it will pain me more than I can say. We are not relatives before the world, but we are by ties of nature, and I pity you to-night as I never pitied any human being in my life.”