"I could not do it," said the Professor. "The news would have got out and the Club would have been disgraced."
"It was not much more than an error of judgment, on Miller's part," said Wright. "He never intended to wrong us out of a penny. Crime is measured only by the intention."
"That is the true inwardness of the whole business, Wright, and that thought kept my ballot blank," was Alex's suggestion.
"I could not do it," said Ashley. "His expulsion would have looked as though we measured friendship by dollars. If a man ever needs friends, it is when he is in trouble."
"I could not do it," chimed in Corrigan. "Suppose all our mistakes shall be remimbered against us, how will we iver git admitted to the great Club above?"
"I could not do it, because I love him," said Harding.
"I feared," said Brewster, "that things were going wrong with Miller a week ago, when I noticed that in lieu of the costly chair which he first brought to the Club, he was using that old, second-hand cheap affair."
"I think," said Harding, "that I have a right to tell now what has been a secret. You know Miller and myself worked together. We were coming up from the mine one evening, ten days ago, when we chanced to pass old man Arnold's cabin—Arnold, who was crippled by a fall in the Curry some months ago. The old man was sitting outside his cabin and resting his crippled limb on a crutch. Miller stopped and asked him how he was getting on, and talked pleasantly with him for a few minutes, when an express wagon came by. Miller left the old man with a pleasant word, asked me if I would not wait there a few minutes, hailed the expressman, jumped upon his wagon, said something to the man which I did not understand, and the wagon was driven rapidly away.
"In a few minutes it returned; Miller sprang down; the expressman handed him the great easy chair; he carried it into the door of the cabin, setting it just inside; then lifted the old man in his arms from his hard chair, placed him in the soft cushions of the other, moved it gently until it was in just the position where the old man could best enjoy looking at the descending night; then, picking up the old battered chair, he said, cheerily: 'Arnold, I want to trade chairs with you,' and walked so rapidly away that the old man could not recover from his surprise enough to thank him. This old chair is the one he brought away.
"Coming home he said to me: 'Harding, don't give me away on this business, please. We are all liable to be crippled some time, and to need comforts which we do not half appreciate now. I would have given the old man the chair two weeks ago, but I did not have it quite paid for at that time.'