II.
What is wrong here, Carper?" said William Harris, as he shut the door behind him. "I expected to find a corpse from the tone of your note. What's up?"
The commission merchant was a short heavy young man with a big square jaw and keen gray eyes. His face indicated bull-dog tenacity and unlimited courage of the sterner sort.
Carper Harris arose when his brother entered. He was as white as the dead. "William," he said, "I wish I were a corpse!"
"Ho! ho!" cried the cattle-man, dropping into a chair. "There is a big smash-up on the track, that is evident. Which is gone, your girl or your job?"
"Brother," continued Carper Harris, "I am in a more horrible position than you can imagine. I don't know whether you will believe me or not, but if you don't, no one will."
"You may be a fool, Carper," answered the commission merchant, closing his hands, on the arms of his chair, "but you are not a liar. Go on, tell me the whole thing."
Carper Harris drew up a chair to the table and began to go over the whole affair from the beginning to the end. As he proceeded, the muscles of his brother's face grew more and more rigid, until they looked as hard and as firm as a cast. When he finally finished and dropped back into his chair, the cattle-man arose and without a word went over to the window, and stood looking out over the city, with his hands behind his back. There was no indication by which one could have known of the bitter struggle going on in the man's bosom, unless one could have looked deep into his eyes; there the danger and despair which he realized as attendant upon this matter shone through in a kind of fierce glare.
Finally he turned round and looked down half smilingly at his brother. "Well, Carper," he said, "is that all the trouble? We can fix that all right."
"How?" almost screamed young Harris, bounding to his feet, "how?"