Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

342 RHYS LEWIS.
you want a good shot, neyer take a double-barrelled gun,,
That's tbe disadvantage of a revolver. It's good for no-
thing except at short range. Am I not your uncle, your
father's brother ? To whom would the disgrace be if you gave
me up to the police ? To James Lewis or Ehys Lewis ? What
does James Lewis care about disgrace? I know a certain proud
chap, though, who wouldn't like it at all — eh ? But there, I
don't wan't to quarrel with you. It isn't respectable for
relations to fall out. Let byegones be byegones. So, old
Abel has gone to his account, has he ? The old screw— he'll
have a lot to answer for, like myself."
" Here, uncle," said I, " I'd rather you killed me than spoke
disrespectfully of my good old master."
" Well, well," he continuned ; "I don't want to hurt your
feelings. It was a capital thing for you that Abel took himself
off. You'll be boss, now ; for what does the old gal and that
born idiot, Jones, know about the business ? If you don't
make your fortune now, the fault will be yours. I hope you
won't deal shabby by me. I'm the only relation left you in
the world, and I've been real unlucky of late. Haven't had a
haul I don't know when, and it was a narrow shave I wasn't
nabbed last week. I had to fight like ."
"I can't bear to listen to your ungodly talk, and I must
leave you, uncle," said I.
"I don't wan't you to take apartments for me," he went on ;
"because that wouldn't pay either of us. But I'm in want of
cash, and cash I must have or starve. P'r'aps you haven't
much about you to-night ; but I can come over to see you,
now and then, since you're to be boss, and are a late bird, like
myself."
"As long as I am there you'll never set foot inside the
house," I declared. " And besides, I'm as poor as yourself."
"That's your own fault," he remarked. "If you hadn't
swallowed so much of the flummery ladled out to you by your
mother you need never have been poor. Trust me, if I had
had your chance."
I must tell the honest truth: at his mention of my mother,
I felt I could throttle him with pleasure, and had to punish
myself very considerably in order to prevent myself from flying