“If you insist on their being paid instanter, what will be the result to him?” “Utter and irretrievable ruin.” “Beggary, Nathan, beggary?” “The most abject beggary, and imprisonment as well, for the property he once owned is so deeply mortgaged, that not a farthing will be available to pay my new claims upon him.” Wilton compressed his hands together. “And his family--his proud, haughty family, Nathan, what of them?” “They must necessarily be thrown on the world, wholly destitute.” Wilton rubbed his hands with savage pleasure. “Who are his mortgagees--do you know their names and addresses?” he asked, in a hissing whisper. “I am the only mortgagee,” responded Nathan almost proudly, and yet coldly. “You must transfer all the debts and mortgages to me,” cried Wilton, with an exulting laugh. “Then, then I alone, shall hold complete power over him. Then he shall be made to feel the clanging beating of the brain, the dead booming of the heart, the sickness of hopeless despair, the shrinking cowering of the spirit which they feel who have been hurled from a high estate, with heavy soul, to drink the dregs of poverty. I must have the mortgages, the--I O U’s--all! all! all!” “No,” said Nathan, with a gloom hanging on his brow; “they are mine, obtained after long, long hard struggles. I shall retain them--I, too, have a purpose to serve, though even in this I act for another;” he raised his eyes upward. Then he added, hastily, “The hard-souled, proud, ambitious man, must be punished, but the mode of his punishment must, after all, I see, be left to me.” Wilton, with feverish animation, urged his point, but Nathan Gomer was not to be moved, and the result of the conference was, that Wilton, to his deep mortification, was compelled to leave in the hands of Nathan the entire management of the recovery of the estates, and the punishment of his implacable foe. Incidentally, Nathan alluded to Wilton’s intention with respect to Flora, and listened quietly to a recapitulation of what he had overheard, as well as to Wilton’s renewed expressions of determination that nothing should turn him from the decision at which he had arrived. Nathan Gomer made no further comment upon it than to advise him to send away Lester Vane for the present, and to let the affair remain in abeyance until he was put into possession of the estates of which he had been so long deprived, to which advice Wilton assented. It was immediately following this interview that Mr. Grahame received a letter from Nathan Gomer. It was placed in his hands as he entered his house on the night of Charles Clinton’s interview with Evangeline. He knew the handwriting at a glance. He snatched it from the hand of Whelks--he forbade him to follow, and he hurried, almost raced, up the staircase to his library. He locked his door on entering the room, and flung the letter on the table, while he raised the faint light of the lamp to a brilliant glare.