'
'Golly!' cried the impressionable John. 'But what's the use? Why does he
do it, anyway?'
'To defraud us of the tontine,' said his brother.
'He couldn't; you have to have a doctor's certificate,' objected John.
'Did you never hear of venal doctors?' enquired Morris. 'They're as
common as blackberries: you can pick 'em up for three-pound-ten a head.'
'I wouldn't do it under fifty if I were a sawbones,' ejaculated John.
'And then Michael,' continued Morris, 'is in the very thick of it. All
his clients have come to grief; his whole business is rotten eggs. If
any man could arrange it, he could; and depend upon it, he has his plan
all straight; and depend upon it, it's a good one, for he's clever, and
be damned to him! But I'm clever too; and I'm desperate. I lost seven
thousand eight hundred pounds when I was an orphan at school.'
'O, don't be tedious,' interrupted John. 'You've lost far more already
trying to get it back.'
CHAPTER II. In Which Morris takes Action
Some days later, accordingly, the three males of this depressing family
might have been observed (by a reader of G.
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