“That is my wish and my duty while I yet live. Fifteen years ago, when we were both young men, we were in the employ of Dudley Wentworth, the uncle of Bradley. We were both in the office, he occupying the more lucrative position. I was married and had a modest, but comfortable, home in Seneca, in the State of Illinois. He too had been three years married, and had a son two years old.”
“Were you friends?”
“Not intimate friends, but we were on friendly terms. He had extravagant habits and spent more money than I—a family man—could afford to do. I had bought a house and lot, for which I agreed to pay the sum of two thousand dollars. I was paying this by slow degrees, but my salary was small, when the great temptation of my life came.”
The sick man paused in exhaustion, but soon proceeded.
“One evening Bradley Wentworth came to my house in a strange state of excitement, and called me to the door, I asked him in, but he declined. ‘I want you to take a walk with me, Lane,’ he said. I demurred, for it was a cold, damp evening, and suggested that it would be better to sit down by the fire, inside.
“‘No, no,’ he said impatiently, ‘what I have to say is most important, and it must be kept a profound secret.’
“Upon this I agreed to his proposal. I took my hat, told your mother that I would soon return, and went out with Wentworth. We had proceeded but a few rods when he said, ‘Lane, I’m in a terrible scrape.’
“‘What is it?’ I asked.
“‘Last week I forged a check on my uncle for five hundred dollars. It was paid at the bank. To-morrow the bank will send in their monthly statement, and among the checks will be the one I forged—’