“Oh, I see,” Dearing said. “Well, in that case I shall have done all in my power to protect your interests. I'll tell you one thing, though, Madge, little girl: the matter looks black enough as it stands; but, really, if I felt that you were going absolutely penniless to a man who has shown himself as reckless of his own interests as Fred Walton has, I'd be blue in earnest, and--and I don't know that I'd be quite able to restrain my temper if such a reckless spendthrift were to thrust himself between you and your natural rights, boldly robbing you, blind as you now are, of what you ought to have, and which later in life you will sadly need. I am not a fighting man, but--well, he'd better not interfere with your material interests, that's all.” She shrank back before the force and suppressed fury in his face and voice, and now, her last hope gone, she simply stared, speechless. He had put his hand upon the iron latch of the gate when she caught his arm and clung to it convulsively. “Oh, brother, you don't know Fred as I do!” she wailed. “He has some faults, I'll admit; but he is true and noble at heart. You see, I've heard him talk in a confidential way and you haven't. The last time I met him he almost cried in telling me of his troubles. He does try very hard to please his father. You see, I am convinced that he has just reached a sort of turning-point, and I am afraid this very thing may make him more desperate.” “If he is sincere,” Wynn retorted, “and is any sort of man, he will be glad of being warned against impoverishing the girl he professes to love. You leave it all to me, sister. I am not going to be harsh with him. I don't really dislike him, and he has nothing against me.” From the expression of utter despair in her eyes he knew that she intended to resist no longer. She lowered her head to the top of the fence, and without looking at him, she asked, in a smothered voice: “What time do you think you will--will be back?” “I can't tell, Madge. I may not find him at once, you know.” “I shall wait up for you,” she gulped. “I couldn't close my eyes until I see you and know what he says. Oh, brother, I am afraid--” “Afraid of what?” he demanded, quickly. “I hardly know how to express it.” She looked up, and on her cheeks lay the damp traces of the tears she had wiped away on her sleeve. “But he is desperate. I am actually afraid he may try to--to do himself harm. It looked, the other evening, as if he were constantly on the point of telling me something about some crisis or other in his affairs which has just come up. He would start out as if about to make a disclosure of some horrible kind, and then he would stop and say: 'But I can't worry you by telling you everything. It won't help matters to talk about my trouble.” “Poor chap,” Dearing said. “I will not be hard on him, sister; I promise you that. I may find him at church; he sometimes goes to take Dora Barry.”