“She thinks it cowardly and mean,” Charles said strongly. Not a sign of anger at these stinging words came into Henry’s face, but instead the look of a child justly reproved. “I guess she’s right, Charles,” he said. “I guess she’s right. I hadn’t thought of it before, but it is mean and cowardly. I’ll call Cranston off at once.” “And Hunter?” Charles asked in his turn. “He can find something else to raise a dust, or he can come out into the open and fight; but he shan’t fight longer behind this woman’s petticoat. I wish we hadn’t done it at all!” “I’d give more than I can tell,” Charles answered, giving cry to that bitterness of shame which, hidden in his heart, he dared not uncover. “Yes,” said Henry; “to think that mother should call our act mean and cowardly! I’d rather the old papers----” Then he stopped short. “Has it ever occurred to you that the papers may have had something to do with Wing’s death?” Charles asked. “Hush up!” exclaimed Henry roughly. “There are some things a man shouldn’t even dare think, much less say.” “But--by God,” Charles answered, “there are some things a man can’t help thinking and perhaps saying. I tell you, I’m not so certain I wouldn’t have shot Wing myself for the sake of getting hold of those papers!” “And if you’re going to keep on talking this way, you might as well have done it,” Henry answered bitterly. “I wouldn’t trust myself to think such things as you’re saying.” “But, Henry, think, just think----” “I won’t,” the other shouted in a wild passion. “I won’t think, and I forbid you to ask me to! The man is dead and the Lord only knows into whose hands those papers have fallen. There’s only one thing I keep thinking--thinking all the time,” and his voice dropped, while he looked anxiously over his shoulder, as if he feared the very walls of his library: “and that is that it was safer to have those papers in his hands, so long as we knew that they were there, than it is to have them in the hands of somebody--we don’t know who, for a purpose, we don’t know what.” Charles grew paler than Henry had ever seen him. There was a gasp in his voice, as if he found breathing difficult, and he almost clutched at his brother as he said: “That means that you are afraid, as I am, that the papers had some connection with his death, and you are trying to persuade yourself to the contrary. A month ago, you’d have jumped at the chance of somebody else having them, no matter who that somebody else might be: yet to-day you try to make me think that you believe it has increased the danger. _You know better._ I don’t care whose hands they’re in, we’re safer than we were when Wing had them. Now it’s only a question of money.” “Then why don’t we hear from them?” “It would be so safe, with matters as they are, for any one to offer to sell Wing’s papers,” sneered Charles. “Suppose whoever’s got them makes copies of them?” Henry suggested. “And you tell me not to think of these things!” Charles cried.