Was it only the evening before?
Taking up the volume of closely written sheets which were bound together by a shoestring that Auntie Sue had laughingly found for him, when he had so joyously announced the completion of the last page of his book, he turned the leaves idly,--reading here and there a sentence with curious interest.

The terrific mental strain of his situation completely divorced him, as it were, from the life which he had lived during those happy months just past, and which was so fully represented by his work.
Again the river, swinging around a sudden turn in its course, had come upon a passage where its peaceful flow was broken by the wild turmoil of the troubled waters.
"And Auntie Sue,"-- something within the man's self was saying,--"dear Auntie Sue, who had saved him, not only from death, but from the hell of the life that he had formerly lived, as well; and whose loving companionship and sympathetic understanding had so inspired and strengthened him in the work which had been the passionate desire of his heart;--the gentle old teacher whose life had been so completely given to others, and who, in the helplessness of her last years, was so alone,--Auntie Sue was depending upon that money which her brother had sent her as the only support of the closing days of her life.

Auntie Sue believed that her money was safe in the bank.

That belief was to her a daily comfort.

Auntie Sue did not know that she was almost penniless;--that the man whom she had saved with such a wondrous salvation had robbed her, and left her so shamefully without means for the necessities of life.