“That is what you will never discover!” cried Richard.  “It is not in you to comprehend the ties of sympathy that ought to hold between two persons situated as we are.  In most families this sympathy binds closely at times,—­at christenings, or burials, or when some member is about to take an important step in life.  Generally speaking, blood is thicker than water; but your blood, cousin Shackford, seems to be a good deal thinner.  I came here to consult with you as my sole remaining kinsman, as one authorized by years and position to give me wise counsel and kindly encouragement at the turning point in my fortune.  I didn’t wish to go among those people like a tramp, with neither kith nor kin to say a word for me.  Of course you don’t understand that.  How should you?  A sentiment of that kind is something quite beyond your conception.”

Richard’s words went into one ear and out the other, without seeming for an instant to arrest Mr. Shackford’s attention.  The idea of Slocum not accepting money—­anybody’s money—­presented itself to Mr. Shackford in so facetious a light as nearly to throw him into good humor.  His foot was on the first step of the staircase, which he now began slowly to mount, giving vent, as he ascended, to a serious of indescribable chuckles.  At the top of the landing he halted, and leaned over the rail.

“To think of Slocum refusing,—­that’s a good one!”

In the midst of his jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every wrinkle of his face.

“Sir!” he shrieked, “it was a trap!  Slocum would have taken it!  If I had been ass enough to make any such offer, he would have jumped at it.  What do you and Slocum take me for?  You’re a pair of rascals!”

Richard staggered back, bewildered and blinded, as if he had received a blow in the eyes.

“No,” continued Mr. Shackford, with a gesture of intense contempt, “you are less than rascals.  You are fools.  A rascal has to have brains!”

“You shameless old man!” cried Richard, as soon as he could get his voice.

To do Mr. Shackford justice, he was thoroughly convinced that Richard had lent himself to a preposterous attempt to obtain money from him.  The absence of ordinary shrewdness in the method stamped it at once as belonging to Slocum, of whose mental calibre Mr. Shackford entertained no flattering estimate.

“Slocum!” he muttered, grinding the word between his teeth.  “Family ties!” he cried, hurling the words scornfully over the banister as he disappeared into one of the upper chambers.

Richard stood with one hand on the newel-post, white at the lip with rage.  For a second he had a wild impulse to spring up the staircase, but, controlling this, he turned and hurried out of the house.

At the gate he brushed roughly against a girl, who halted and stared.  It was a strange thing to see Mr. Richard Shackford, who always had a pleasant word for a body, go by in that blind, excited fashion, striking one fist into the palm of the other hand, and talking to his own self!  Mary Hennessey watched him until he wheeled out of Welch’s Court, and then picking up her basket, which she had rested on the fence, went her way.