“And so Cain said,” responded the Reverend Bronson. Then, as he was departing: “I do not blame you too much, for I can see that you are the slave of your position. But do not shield yourself with the word that you are not your brother's keeper. You may be made grievously to feel that your brother's welfare is your welfare, and that in his destruction your own destruction is also to be found.” Men have rallied me as superstitious, and it may be that some grains of truth lie buried in that charge. Sure it is, that this last from the Reverend Bronson was not without its uncomfortable effect. It pressed upon me in a manner vaguely dark, and when he was gone, I caught myself regretting the “cleaning up,” as Gothecore expressed it, of the dissolute young Van Flange. And yet, why should one feel sympathy for him who, by his resolute viciousness, struck down his own mother? If ever rascal deserved ruin, it was he who had destroyed the hopes of one who loved him before all! The more I considered, the less tender for the young Van Flange I grew. And as to his destruction carrying personal scathe for me, it might indeed do, as a flourish of the pulpit, to say so, but it was a thought too far fetched, as either a warning or a prophecy, to justify one in transacting by its light his own existence, or the affairs of a great organization of politics. The end of it was that I smiled over a weakness that permitted me to be disturbed by mournful forebodes, born of those accusing preachments of the Reverend Bronson. For all that my reverend mentor was right; the sequel proved how those flames which licked up young Van Flange were to set consuming fire to my own last hope. It would seem that young Van Flange, as a topic, was in everybody's mouth. Morton, having traction occasion for calling on me, began to talk of him at once. “Really!” observed Morton, discussing young Van Flange, “while he's a deuced bad lot, don't y' know, and not at all likely to do Mulberry credit, I couldn't see him starve, if only for his family. So I set him to work, as far from the company's money as I could put him, and on the soberish stipend of nine hundred dollars a year. I look for the best effects from those nine hundred dollars; a chap can't live a double life on that; he can't, really!” “And you call him a bad lot,” said I. “The worst in the world,” returned Morton. “You see young Van Flange is such a weakling; really, there's nothing to tie to. All men are vicious; but there are some who are strong enough to save themselves. This fellow isn't.” “His family is one of the best,” said I. For myself, I've a sincere respect for blood, and some glimpse of it must have found display in my face. “My dear boy,” cried Morton, “there's no more empty claptrap than this claptrap of family.” Here Morton adorned his high nose with the eyeglass that meant so much with him, and surveyed me as from a height. “There's nothing in a breed when it comes to a man.”