Whir-r-r-r-r!!!
Click, click, click!!!
Seventy-one, one, one! It was the last he heard, and then he sank forward on his desk in a drunken stupor.
At this moment Uncle Terry, with Frye's letter in his pocket, and righteous wrath in his heart, was speeding toward Boston as fast as steam could carry him.
The clear incisive strokes of an adjacent clock proclaiming midnight awoke Frye. He raised his head, and in that almost total darkness for a moment knew not where he was. Then, ere the echoes of those funeral knells died away, he arose, lit the two gas-jets, and sat down.
Seventy-one, one, one!!
They brought it all back to him, and now, alone in his misery, he groaned aloud, and with his despair came the dread of the morrow, when he, the once proud and defiant man, must go forth crushed, broken, despairing, penniless!
All would know it, and all would rejoice. Out of the many that hated or feared him, not one would feel a grain of pity, and well he knew it. He could almost see the looks of scorn on their faces, and hear them say, "Glad of it! Served him right, the old reprobate!"
Then his past life came back to him. He had never married, and since he had looked down upon his dead mother's face, no woman's hand had sought his with tenderness. All his long life of grasping greed had been spent in money-getting and money-saving. No sense of right or justice had ever restrained him; but only the fear of getting caught had kept him from downright stealing. Year after year he had added to his hoard, carefully invested it, and now in a few days of desperate dread it had all been swept away!
Then perhaps the memory of that mother, as he had seen her last, with pallid face and folded arms, brought to him the first and only good impulse he ever felt, for he took a pen and wrote a brief but valuable letter. Then he went to his tall safe, opened both doors, and taking a small, flat packet from an inner till, returned to his desk, placed that and the letter in one long envelope, and sealed and directed it.