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Rh me with two thousand five hundred pounds, and out of that you had two hundred." "I took it as a friendly present." "Precisely—from a perfect stranger. Time went on. The three months slipped by. I began to fidget. Luck was most consummately against me. Two thousand five hundred pounds went no way at all; I had lost it, pretty nearly every penny, before I really realised that I had ever had it. When it was gone, I knew that breakers were ahead; a pretty nasty lot of rocks. As I say, I began to fidget. I knew my brother, and was well aware that, since last time it had been nearly murder, this time it would come as near as possible to quite. Philip's temper, my friends, Philip's temper was distinctly bad. We had had a few fights together, he and I, and out of them it had not been my general custom to come out best. Now I foresaw that the biggest fight of all our fights was drawing comfortably close; and when I asked myself in what condition I should probably emerge from it, I was not able to supply my question with an answer which gave me entire satisfaction.

"I began to hate my brother. As the days stole by, I began to hate him more and more—to fear him. The two things together, the hatred and the fear, took such a hold of me that I began to cast about in my mind how I could