'Well, when you first engaged me to come to you,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'you took for granted that I was respectable all through, and I hadn't courage enough to avow the truth. I ought to have said who and what my husband was and where he was then living. I should, but that he--but that I--but that there had been something against him. Not that he was not loving and good to me, and always had been, understand that, but he got into trouble when he was a young man, and the memory of that seems to have stuck to him, and respectable people were consequently unwilling to give him employment, and he was thus forced to do what he could, often what he hated, to gain a bare subsistence. 'The knowledge of this sin of his early youth,' she continued, 'was not confined to me. I shared it with his only brother, a man exactly resembling him in size, feature, and complexion, but who has risen in the world, while my poor Ephraim has sunk, and who made use of the knowledge of the cloud hanging over Ephraim's head to employ him as his agent in all kinds of dirty work in which he did not choose himself to appear. My husband was known as Ephraim Jenkins, but his brother of whom I speak, who has wrought upon us all this woe, and through whom indirectly, if all I believe is true, I am now a widow indeed, is called Trenton Warren.' 'Trenton Warren!' cried Carey. Helen said no word, but sat with her eyes distended and fixed upon the speaker. 'Trenton Warren,' repeated Mrs. Jenkins; 'the man whom you now suppose to be dead, but who, I fear, has been left for the commission of still further crime, being, as I know him to be, the wickedest man on the face of the earth. Listen. Some months ago now, Trenton Warren sent for Ephraim, my husband, who was always at his brother's beck and call, and had to do whatever he was told; this time he was desired not to go to his brother's office as usual, but to name some place where Warren was not likely to be recognised. They met, and Warren developed his scheme to Ephraim, not then or by word of mouth, but in a letter of instructions which he handed to him, and told him to read afterwards. The main point in these instructions was this. I have told you that the two brothers were exactly alike, so much so that it was impossible for those who knew them best to distinguish between them. I don't suppose it had often been much noticed, for Trenton Warren was always well-dressed, and my poor Ephraim was scarcely ever out of rags; but Warren knew of the likeness, and admitted it, and determined to use it to serve his purpose; and the main point of the instructions was this: that Ephraim was to personate his brother; that he was to have plenty of money and live like a gentleman, and, in fact, to pass himself off as Trenton Warren down at Chicago.' 'At Chicago!' cried Thornton Carey, springing up from his chair, Helen still preserving a stony silence.