A TALE OF TWO MISERS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXV, Issue 1839, 16 June 1903, Page 3

A TALE OF TWO MISERS.

By Edgar Faweett.

(Coi.tinuid from page 1.)

father but too clearly in tuo L --.. ... .;s u. his monomania. After the funeral Martha went to her husband and said: "Now, Alfred, tilings will change. We can live as other people live. Your long waiting has ended. Let us begin at once." "Begin—what?" he .muttered, unci turned away from her. Then he suddenly veered round again and shot out thcscjfcvords. each one stabbing her to the soul as she heard them: "I've pot used to the waiting now. I find I iov ' money just as he did. 1 don't want to • ; . I it. and I won't. We can go on as we've gone on for so long. After all I'm his nephew, eve?— inch of me. It isn't what money will bring; it's what t e mere having and holding it will bring. I like that best. I've grown, in all these years, Martha, to like that best. Yon needn't argue with me. It will do no good. I've got it at last, and I mean to keep it—tight, tight, tight!" He laughed and lifted one hand in the air, clinching it as though his fingers closed on some viewless money bag. Martha turned from him, shocked to the soul. That night she brought her son to the door of a big, dim room, where his father sat beside a table under the light of a green-shaded lamp. Now and then

there came a faint, hollow, clicking sound, as Jris pale, wasted fingers moved and paused. The lamp rays glittered at times on the little yellow cubes of coin. It seemed almost as if lie wore playing that same weird game again with the ghost of his dead uncle, for at intervals he would raise his haggard eyes and stare across the small circuit of the tables, where stood an empty chair.

"Look, my son —look, my darling Alfred," Martha whispered. "This is what money can do with a soul that drifts into loving it too well. Once your father was young and handsome and full of goodness, like yourself. See him now. Is it not too tumble? If it were not for you—for you and Gertrude—this thing would be my death. But I live for you. I live in the hope that you will wipe away this sor-

row of mine. You must wait, my boy, as-he waited, but differently and with a far wiser, nobler spirit. Pro;: eme

that you will wait in this way. .. red!" The young man threw his anr ::bout his mother's neck and murnvv ' to her certain words of cheer, which ended thus: "Thanks to J'ou, my mother. T shall never be what he has become, though I should wait just as long as he waited —yes, and even longer, still!" "My darling! my con«o!t!tion! my hope!" Martha murmured back. They turned away slow!;.- and softly, ■While that faint clicking sou tl went on in the big, dim room below the dreamy lamp and the ravaged face that it lighted.

[the END.]