Gaut Gurley | Page 7

of
pettishness, after finding there was no further chance of escaping an
interview which he had evidently been trying to avoid; "what would
you have now?"
"I would just know whether you intend to keep your engagement,"
replied Gurley, fixing his black, quivering eyes keenly on the other.

"What engagement?"
"To give me a chance to win back that money."
"Which you demand when you have taken from me an hundred to
one!"
"And who had a better right? Through whose means did you make your
fortune? Besides this, haven't I always given you a fair chance to win
back all you could?"
"I want no more of such chances,"
"But you promised; and I want to know whether you mean to keep that
promise or not."
"Supposing I do, you would not have me leave home to-night, would
you?"
"Yes, to-night."
"But my brother, as you have already discovered, I presume, has just
arrived on a visit; and you know I can't decently leave him."
"And what do I care for that? Say whether you will meet me at the old
room, or not, as soon as your company have cleared out?"
"You are unreasonable, cruel, Gaut."
"Then say you will not go, and see what will come of it, Mark
Elwood!"
"I must go--I will go, Gaut," replied Elwood, turning pale at the last
intimation. "As soon as I get rid of the company, I will start directly for
the place."
"Well, just as you can afford," said Gaut, doggedly, as he turned on his
heel, and made his way out of the house.
Mark Elwood drew a long breath as he was thus relieved of the other's
presence, and was leaving the room, when Mrs. Elwood, who had felt
much disturbed at discovering among her guests one of whose
questionable character and connection with her husband she was
already apprised, and who, from an adjoining apartment, had caught a
slight glimpse of the meeting just described, and enough of the
conversation to enable her to guess at its import, hurriedly came
forward, and, in a voice tremulous from suppressed emotion, said:
"You surely are not going out to-night, Mr. Elwood?"
"No--that is--only for a short time," he said, hesitating, and a little
confused at the discovery of his design, which a second thought told
him she had made; "only for a short time. But don't stop me to talk now;

you see the company are retiring. I must see the gentlemen off."
"Mr. Elwood, I must be heard," persisted the troubled and anxious wife.
"I cannot bear to have you go off, and leave your only brother, whom
you have not seen for years, and for such company! O Mr. Elwood,
how can you let that bad man--"
"Hush! don't get into such a stew. I shall soon be back," interrupted the
other. "You can excuse my absence. There, I hear them inquiring for
me. I must go," he added, abruptly breaking away, and leaving his
grieved companion to hide her emotions as she best could from the
guests who were now seen approaching for their parting salutations.
In a few minutes the company had dispersed for their respective homes,
and with them, also, had unnoticed slipped away their infatuated host.

CHAPTER II
.
"At first, he, busy, plodding poor, Earned, saved, and daily swelled his
store; But soon Ambition's summits rose, And Avarice dug his mine of
woes."
For the better understanding of some of the allusions of the preceding
chapter, and of others that may yet appear in different parts of our tale,
as well, indeed, as for a better appreciation of the whole, we will here
turn aside from the thread of the narrative just commenced, to take a
brief retrospect of the leading events and circumstances with which the
previous lives of the several personages we have introduced had been
connected, and among which their characters had been shaped and their
destinies determined.
Some twenty two or three years previous to the juncture we have been
describing, Arthur and Mark Elwood, by the fruits of their unremitting
industry as laborers on a farm in summers, and as pedlars of what they
could best buy and sell in winters, added to the few hundred dollars
patrimony they each inherited, were enabled, in a few years, to realize
the object of their early ambition, in the opening of a small retail store,
in one of the little outskirt villages of northern New-Hampshire.
Such, like that of hundreds of others among us who now count their
wealth by half millions, was the slender beginning of these two
brothers. And, although they were from the first, as we have seen them

at the last, as different in their general characters as they were in their
persons, they yet got