"Then we'll sell the furniture—every last stick! We'll sell the clothes from our backs—I'll sell myself into slavery before Fletcher shall beat me now!"
"We've sold all we've got," said Cynthia; "the old furniture is too heavy—all that's left; nobody about here wants it."
"I tell you I'll find those three hundred dollars if I have to steal them. I'd rather go to prison than have Fletcher get the place."
"Then he'd leave it in the end," remarked Cynthia hopelessly; adding after a pause, "I've thought it all out, dear, and we must steal the money—we must steal it from mother."
"From mother!" he echoed, touched to the quick.
"You know her big diamond," sobbed the woman, "the one in her engagement ring, that she never used to take off, even at night, till her fingers got so thin."
"Oh, I couldn't!" he protested.
"There's no other way," pursued Cynthia, without noticing him. "Surely, it is better than having her turned out in her old age—surely, anything is better than that. We can take the ring to-night after she goes to bed, and pry the diamond from the setting; it is held only by gold claws, you know. Then we will put in it the piece of purple glass from Docia's wedding ring—the shape is the same; and she will never find it out. Oh, mother! mother!"
"I can't, "returned Christopher stubbornly; "it is like robbing her, and she so blind and helpless. I cannot do it."
"Then I will," said Cynthia quietly, and, turning from him, she walked rapidly to the house.