"I do not forget, sir. Those were your very words. Will you permit me?" He took from the table the document which had been referred to in the conversation that had lately taken place. "And this old man has been all his life paying a debt for which he was not liable! There is hope yet for human nature, sir." A queer smile came upon his lips as he uttered these words in a half-gentle, half-bantering tone.
"Speak plainly," was the stern rejoinder of the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell.
"I will try to do so. My uncle left a request that all his papers should be burnt, and I am my uncle's heir. Why was this preserved?"
"You have heard: for your good. It is worth money to you. The man admits the claim."
"Money!" exclaimed Felix, with a light laugh, in which there was bitterness: "But the dead must be obeyed."
He went to the fireplace, struck a match, and applied the light to the paper. The Reverend Emanuel Creamwell, with face white with anger, watched the burning of the paper. Felix let the ashes fall into the fender, and tapped his fingers lightly together, with the air of one wiping away a soil.
"So!" he said. "I wash my hands of that."
"You know what you have done?" said the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell, placing his hand upon the table to steady himself.
"Yes, sir," answered, Felix gravely; "I shall never trouble you again."
Then he left the room quietly and sadly.