“Oh,” she panted, “you are not reasonable. I have given you money. Go as you said and hide somewhere. You are weak and ill now.”
“Yes,” he said, in a voice which wrung her heart. “I am weak and ill now.”
“A little rest, dear, and the knowledge that you have the means of escaping will make you more calm.”
He looked at her with his eyes so full of wild anger that she half shrank from him, but his face changed.
“Poor little sis!” he said tenderly; “I frighten you. Look at me. Am I fit to go away alone? I know—I feel that at any moment I may break down and go off my head among strangers.”
She looked at him wildly, and as she stood trembling there in a state of agitation which overset her generally calm balance, she read in his eyes that he was speaking the truth.
“Put that note in an envelope and direct it,” he said in a slow, measured way, and mechanically, and as if for the time being his will was again stronger than hers, she obeyed him, dropped the letter on the table, and then stood gazing from it to her brother and back again.
“It’s hard upon you,” he said, with his hand to his head, as if he could think more clearly then, “hard upon the poor old dad. But it seems my only chance, Lou, my girl.”
Father—brother—what should she do?
“I can feel it now,” he said drearily. “There, I’m cool now. It’s lying in that cold, wet cave, and the horrors I’ve gone through. I’ve got something coming on—had touches of it before—in the nights,” he went on slowly and heavily, “p’r’aps it’ll kill me—better if it does.”