father, and soon I was alone with the old man.

I was grieved and shocked at his appearance. He seemed twenty years older.
I scarcely recognized in the pale, thin, invalid, the portly country
gentleman whom I had known.

The motive for his letter was soon explained. The executorial accounts,
whose terrible disarrangement I had aided, five years before, in
remedying, still hung over the dying man's head, like a nightmare. He
could not die, he said, with the thought in his mind, that any one might
attribute this disorder to intentional maladministration--"to fraud, it
might be."

And at the word "fraud," his wan cheek became crimson.

"My own affairs, Mr. Cleave," he continued, "are, I find, in a most
unhappy condition. I have been far too negligent; and now, on my
death-bed, for such it will prove, I discover, for the first time, that I
am well-nigh a ruined man!"

He spoke with wild energy as he went on. I, in vain, attempted to impress
upon him, the danger of exciting himself.

"I must explain everything, and in my own way," he said, with burning
cheeks, "for I look to you to extricate me. I have appointed you, Mr.
Cleave, my chief executor; but, above all, I rely upon you, I adjure you,
to protect my good name in those horrible accounts, which you once helped
to arrange, but which haunt me day and night like the ghost of a murdered
man!"