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44 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE gold," said Ruth, with uncanny directness. "How'd he go, Wilks? Thru ve roof? Wist I'd been awake to 've sawn him." With a sudden, eerie veering of mood, she dropped to her knees and clasped her dimple- pricked hands in the devout attitude of an Infant Samuel. "Now pray me, please, Wilks," she directed. "Gran'dad's too dead to hear my prayers tonight." The brothers felt their way down the graveled walk in silence. The NOW PRAY ME, PLEASE, WILKS, SHE DIRECTED rank smell of crushed tansy leaves stained the pure air—or perhaps it was something else. Certainly they no longer walked comradely together as they had come. Life, the Alche- mist, has two prime reagents—one is Love; the other, Greed. Either can transform the human soul. In the imaginations of each of these two more-than-brothers flamed the sallow glitter of gold. With what they had seen that night in old James Gresham's secret strong-room, had come Desire, and its twin sister, Hate. They cast sidelong, suspicious glances at one another, which met, wavered, and, finally, met again. "Well?" said John, with an effort at nonchalance. "Well?" The other shivered and drew his hand waveringly over his eyes. "Ugh! think of the old skinflint's spinning such a golden web under our eyes all these years," he said. "The last of his line, except the little girl. You know, they say the Greshams were once pirates and highwaymen, and that old rattle-trap of a house back there has seen more than one queer thing. I'd believe anything after what we saw tonight. Well, the girl'll be rich." "Yes," agreed his brother, slowly, "the girl will be rich " The moon shuddered down across faces suddenly distorted with new, cruel lines. The months dragged by aimlessly in the little village, unconscious of undercurrents of elemental passion. In the grim, gray house on the hill, Ruth prattled over her dolls as joy- ously as any child, while Wilks pot- tered drearily around the echoing shell of rooms, refurnishing them with the grandeur of old days and peopling the moth-riddled divans and rat-hunted alcoves with the shades of the long dead. The venturesome boys of the village dared each other to climb the hill at night, while the rooks in the naked elms shrieked hoarsely, like lost souls. Visitors, to rap the corroded knuckles of the front-door knocker, were few—two only, in fact. And, strangely, after that first visit, they came singly, with backward glances of unease. Stealthy footsteps creaked the loose boards of stair and bedroom at odd hours. Shadows, that fled guiltily at a noise, flitted across the bare walls. Now and then a rheumatic lock squealed like a taunting tongue, and the vitals of the house groaned to sly steps. It was inevitable that the sore truth should fester to the surface before long. "You! I thought so!" sneered Henry Collins, detaching himself from the gloom of the doorway. "And how long, my thief-brother, has this been going on?" "Brother-thief is better," snarled the other. "I have as much right