“Renny,” he said, “you can’t mean to treat me, your own brother, like this? Let’s have confidence in one another and combine.” He gave a little embarrassed laugh. “I know where the treasure’s hid, I tell you. S’posing we share it and----” He stopped abruptly, with an alarmed look. Something in my face must have forewarned him, for he walked unsteadily to the door, glancing fearfully at me. Passing the brandy bottle on his way, he seized it with sudden defiance. “I’ll have this, anyhow,” he murmured. “You won’t object to my taking that much away.” Hugging it to his breast under his coat, he went from the room. I followed him down the stairs; saw him out of the house; shut the door on him. Then I listened for his shuffling footstep going up the yard and away before I would acknowledge to myself that he had been got rid of at a price small under the circumstances. I remained at my post for full assurance of his departure for many minutes after he had left, and when at last I stole up to my father’s room I found the old man fallen into a doze. Seen through the wan twilight how broken and decaying and feeble he seemed! I sat by him till he stirred and woke. His eyes opened upon me with a pleased look at finding me beside him, and he put out a thin rugged hand and took mine into it. “I’ve been asleep,” he said. “I dreamed a bad son of mine came back and terrified the old man. It was a dream, wasn’t it, Renny?” “Only a dream, dad. Jason isn’t here.” “I thought it was. It didn’t trouble me much, for all that. I learned confidence in the presence of this strong good fellow here.” “Dad, we’ve £30 left of the fifty I raised two months ago on that Julian medallion. May I have ten of them?” “Ten pounds, Renalt? That’s a mighty gap in the hoard.” “I want it for a particular purpose. You can trust me not to ask you if it were to be avoided.” He gave a deep sigh. “Take it, then. It isn’t in you to misapply a trust.” He turned his face away with a slight groan. Poor old man! My soul cried out with remorse to so trouble his confidence in me. Yet what I proposed seemed to me best. He would not rise and come down to supper when I suggested it. “Let me lie here,” he said. “Sometimes it seems to me, Renalt, I’m breaking up--that the wheel down there crows and sings for a victim again.” It was the first time I had ever heard him directly refer to this stormy heart of the old place, that had throbbed out so incessantly its evil influence over the lives shut within range of it. It was plunging and murmuring now in the depths below us, so insistent even at that distance that the soft whining of the stones in our more immediate neighborhood was scarcely audible.