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196 to relate, returned to Elms, who was staring at the remaining Will.

"One of them two inevitable things has happened," remarked Malduke, sententiously. "Number one, the Will has disappeared. Now, as to number two, if anything should happen to the doctor, you must see to that, Elms. You're to be his guardian angel."

"What do you mean, you devil of an anarchist?" cried the elder, starting and turning a searching eye on his companion. "You're a very fiend, Richard Malduke, as all your cruel crew are. For all the estates in Christendom I'll lay no hand on him."

"God may do that," replied the other, with mock solemnity, feeling that he had been moving too fast. "The man's done for. One foot in the grave already. You are going with him to-morrow. A lot of things may," he added, significantly, "happen between here and the other side of the world and back."

"I'm not going to help them, at any rate," was the dogged reply, as the tempted one thumped the table, looking very savage and very virtuous.

"Well, consider at least these two things," said the agitator, accustomed to marshal his crude thoughts under artificial headings. "Think what you and I could do with this here place, if it was ours—the kind of real living commune we could set up. And consider again, what's the good of a man when his work's done? Is it not sometimes a mercy to remove him from trouble to come—to put him out of his misery, poor chap? What is the cause, I'd like to know, of the present deterioration of the race? Why, the insane way in which useless people are patched up, in hospitals and asylums, and set adrift to sow seeds of disease throughout the community. One of our planks is, away with the useless!