The rays of a single candle showed the two old people hysterically clasping in their arms the figure that had entered--a slight but vicious-looking young fellow of five-and-twenty.
"There, d--n it!" he said impatiently, in a voice whose rich depth was like Josephine's, but whose querulous action was that of the two old people before him, "let me go, and quit that, I didn't come here to be strangled! I want some money--money, you hear! Devilish quick, too, for I've got to be off again before daylight.

So look sharp, will you ?" "But, Stevy dear, when you didn't come that time three months ago, but wrote from Los Angeles, you said you'd made a strike at last, and"-- "What are you talking about ?" he interrupted violently.

"That was just my lyin' to keep you from worryin' me.

Three months ago--three months ago! Why, you must have been crazy to have swallowed it; I hadn't a cent." "Nor have we," said the old woman, shrilly.

"That hellish sister of yours still keeps us like beggars.