"Come up to my room. I don't care to have all Montgomery hear us."
When the door closed on them, Charles threw off his overcoat and confronted his brother with a dark countenance.
"You're playing the devil with the whole bunch of us—do you realize that! You've been sneaking over to Kirkwood to tell him all our family history. You think by playing up to him you'll get a lot of money. If you had any claims against father's estate you ought to have come to me with them—not gone to the man that's trying to pull us all down."
"Stop, right where you are! I went to Kirkwood because I felt that the only square thing was to turn the farm over to him until things were straightened out. And after I'd turned in the farm, you fell over yourself to surrender some stuff you had—things you'd tried to hide or placed a fake appraisement on."
Charles, standing by the window with his hands in his pockets, smiled derisively. Fred's long ulster accentuated his rural appearance. He was a big fellow and his deep voice had boomed with an aggressive note his brother resented.
"Don't bawl as though you were driving cattle. There's no need of telling all Main Street our affairs. Do you know what's the matter with you—Kirkwood's working you! He's trying to scare you with threats of the penitentiary into telling him a lot of stuff about the family. He meant to try it on me, but I beat him to it—I told him to go to the bottom of everything. And if you'd kept your mouth shut I'd have taken care of you, too. You took that farm with your eyes open; and I'll say to you right now that you got a better share of the estate than Ethel and I did."
"Then you haven't anything to be afraid of. If it's all straight there can't be any trouble. Is this all you wanted?"
This was evidently not in the least what Charles wanted, for he changed his tone and the direction of the talk.
"You know, Fred, I was in father's confidence very fully. I am older than you, and I was associated with him in his schemes and knew all about them. Father was a very able man; you know that; everybody said he was one of the shrewdest and most farseeing men in the state. I won't say that his methods were always just what they should have been; but he's dead and gone, and it's not for us to jump on him or let anybody else kick him. So far we understand each other, don't we?"
"All right; hurry up with the rest of it."