“I don’t want your help, if I have to get it in that way. Why don’t you do unto me as you would have me do to you?”
“I have a family and they are in society, and I am not so free to go as you are, and if this comes out, I may have to remain here, but not by choice.”
“Can’t you see the trouble I’m in?”
“I can see if you would get out of here and they could not find you, then they would drop it all, and you would be a free man and so would I.”
“If I were to do as you want me to, where could I go and what could I do? I have no money.”
“Did I not say that I would help you? You can leave the city and I will send you money under an assumed name. I can take care of you.”
“You are looking out for yourself, I know, Oliver. If you had not stolen all my part of the estate, you would not be here this hour of the night, talking to me. You have no brotherly love for me, or you would get me out and prove to the world that I am innocent, and take me to your comfortable home as a long-lost brother. I would not disgrace your society family. My mother was a good woman, and if I did fail to get the education I should have received, I have a good, pure heart in me, and am one that has always tried to do right and will do so as long as I live. It is not always the one, Oliver, who had the advantages, who has the best education, that is the purest. I am at fault for not having an education, I know, for I ran away from home when I was a boy, but I have never committed a crime, as you have done.”
“You are not looking at this as you should. I am going to say to you that if you fail to do as you promised me you would—if you do not deny your name—I will murder you.”
“Then you would murder me for wealth and society, would you, Oliver?”
“I would.”