George Sheldon seated himself astride upon a chair, and, with his folded arms resting on the back of it, contemplated this hideous spectacle. It was a picture that he had never thought to see, and the feeling with which he surveyed it was not unmingled with pleasure.
"When you rode me rough-shod, my friend, I used to think how I should enjoy taking my change out of you," he said; "but I never thought I should have such an opportunity as this—never, by Jove! I thought you would ride the high horse to the end of the journey; I didn't think your steed would land you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, have you?—tumbled upon every platform?—and you've found all your cleverness no go upon the other side of the three thousand miles of everlasting wet, as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic; and you've come back whining to me, and I'm to help you, am I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I suppose, and make you my clerk, or my junior partner, eh?—that would be better. Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon wouldn't look bad on my door. That's about what you mean when you talk of blood being thicker than water, isn't it?"
The abject wretch who had once been Philip Sheldon felt that his brother was trifling with him, savouring to the last drop that cup of triumph which the chances of fortune had offered to his lips.
"Don't play the fool with me, George," he said piteously. "I don't ask you much—a crust of bread, a corner to sleep in, and a cast-off suit of clothes: that's not much for one brother to ask of another."
"Perhaps not," replied George Sheldon; "but it's a great deal for you to ask of me. You've had your turn, Phil; and you made the most of it, and contrived to keep me at arm's length. My turn has come at last, and you may depend upon it I shall contrive now to keep you at arm's length."
The vagrant stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure of food and shelter; and he had endured miseries and deprivations that reduce a man to a state in which food and shelter seem to constitute the supreme good that can be obtained in this life.
"You won't refuse to do something for me, George," he whined piteously.
"I will do nothing for you. Do you hear that, my man? Nothing! You taught me that blood is not thicker than water twelve years ago, when you married Tom Halliday's widow, and drew your purse-strings, after flinging me a beggarly hundred as you'd throw a bone to a dog. You made me understand that was all I should ever get out of your brotherly love, or your fear of my telling the world what I knew. You gave me a dinner now and then, because it suited you to keep your eye upon me; and you had generally some piece of dirty work on hand that made the advice of a sharp practitioner like me uncommonly useful to you. I don't believe that you ever gave me so much as a dinner that you didn't take payment for in meal or in malt. Don't come howling here now, trying to persuade me that blood is thicker than water, or that brotherhood means anything more than the accident of birth. And now I've said all I have to say; and the sooner you make yourself scarce, the better for both of us."
"George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony hands convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when he begged his bread in the streets of New York, "you can't mean to turn me out of doors on such a night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the Middle Passage; but let them try the cabin of an emigrant vessel, and they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings have to suffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with half-a-dollar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor decent shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, George, till you can get me an order for the nearest hospital. It's a toss-up whether I ever come out of it."
"Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you?" cried George.