“Ef you'll take my advice,” continued Jack, placing his watch and chain under his pillow, and quietly unloosing his cravat, “you'll quit this yer forlin', marry that chap, and hand over to him the money and the money-makin' that's killin' you. He'll get rid of it soon enough. I don't say this because I expect to git it; for, when he's got that much of a raise, he'll make a break for 'Frisco, and lose it to some first-class sport THERE. I don't say, neither, that you mayn't be in luck enough to reform him. I don't say, neither--and it's a derned sight more likely!--that you mayn't be luckier yet, and he'll up and die afore he gits rid of your money. But I do say you'll make him happy NOW; and, ez I reckon you're about ez badly stuck after that chap ez I ever saw any woman, you won't be hurtin' your own feelin's either.” The blood left Peg's face as she looked up. “But that's WHY I can't give him the money--and he won't marry me without it.” Mr. Hamlin's hand dropped from the last button of his waistcoat. “Can't--give--him--the--money?” he repeated slowly. “No.” “Why?” “Because--because I LOVE him.” Mr. Hamlin rebuttoned his waistcoat, and sat down patiently on the bed. Peg arose, and awkwardly drew the portmanteau a little nearer to him. “When Jim Byways left me this yer property,” she began, looking cautiously around, “he left it to me on CONDITIONS; not conditions ez waz in his WRITTEN will, but conditions ez waz SPOKEN. A promise I made him in this very room, Mr. Hamlin,--this very room, and on that very bed you're sittin' on, in which he died.” Like most gamblers, Mr. Hamlin was superstitious. He rose hastily from the bed, and took a chair beside the window. The wind shook it as if the discontented spirit of Mr. Byways were without, re-enforcing his last injunction. “I don't know if you remember him,” said Peg feverishly, “he was a man ez hed suffered. All that he loved--wife, fammerly, friends--had gone back on him. He tried to make light of it afore folks; but with me, being a poor gal, he let himself out. I never told anybody this. I don't know why he told ME; I don't know,” continued Peg, with a sniffle, “why he wanted to make me unhappy too. But he made me promise, that, if he left me his fortune, I'd NEVER, NEVER--so help me God!--never share it with any man or woman that I LOVED; I didn't think it would be hard to keep that promise then, Mr. Hamlin; for I was very poor, and hedn't a friend nor a living bein' that was kind to me, but HIM.” “But you've as good as broken your promise already,” said Hamlin. “You've given Jack money, as I know.”