"Not yet, but you know the bank examiner will be here Thursday. It can't be kept from him. If I were unmolested for three months I could replace the money. I'm sure more than that amount will come out of the Western mining lands I hold. The sale is made, and only a legal technicality holds back the final settlement."
"Ah, then if you confessed the truth to the directors, and promised to replace the money, would they—"
"They would send me to jail, just the same," William answered. "They are that sort, every man of them. In their eyes a man who will steal once will steal again, and they may be right—they may be right."
"Nevertheless, you must not think of—the—the other thing, Billy. For God's sake, don't!" Charles pleaded.
"What else can I do?" William swayed in his brother's embrace and turned toward the door. Charles released him, and stood speechless in sheer helplessness as his brother stalked to the door, opened it, and went slowly down the stairs.
Left alone, the younger man turned to a window and stood staring blankly out into the sunshine. Presently he went to the bureau, opened a drawer, and took out the flask of whisky. Taking a glass, he poured some of the fluid out and then stood staring at it in surprise. A strange thing had happened. It was like a miracle, and yet psychologists have said that it belongs to the regular order of nature. Charles was conscious of no desire for the drink before him; in fact, he was averse to it. He was under the sway of a high spiritual emotion, which the thing in his hand seemed vaguely to oppose. He marveled over the change in himself as he held the glass up to the light.
"I'm asking poor Billy to be a man," he said, "while I am less than one myself. Strange! strange!" he muttered, wonderingly, "but I feel as if I shall never drink again—never, never!" With a hand that was quite steady he took the glass to the window and emptied its contents on the grass in the little plot below. Then he began to shave himself, and after that was done he dressed himself carefully.
The church-bells were ringing.
"Oh, I must save him—I must save them all!" he kept saying. "Something must be done. But what?"