human
Sit down, child, he said,
gpt
I have a strange story to tell, that touches you nearly.
human
I know who ’Red Snake’ was, he began;
gpt
A _brother_? cried out Joe;
human
I don’t doubt it at all. He was a bad man; a degenerate, a scoundrel, from his very boyhood. The two brothers were descendants of a splendid old family, the Carrolls, of Virginia. But every few generations there appears in that family a _red Carroll_. The family are all of dark complexion, and whenever a red-haired Carroll appears among them there is sure to follow trouble and disaster. Before he was twenty years old Bernard Carroll had broken his mother’s heart and caused her death. When he was twenty-three he fell wildly, madly, passionately in love with my sister Marion.
gpt
Marion—_my mother_! That was why he stared at me so! That was why he called me ’Marion’!
human
Yes, no doubt it was. You are marvelously like her. Startlingly like what she was at your age. He wooed her with the same fiery zeal, with the same ardor and passion that he carried into every act of his life. For a time his good looks, his native charm, his passionate wooing attracted her. Then as she came to know him better she turned from him with loathing. It was just at this time that Lee came home from college. He too fell in love with Marion, and she returned his love. In a short time they became engaged.
gpt
Bernard never forgave either of them. For Lee he developed a hatred that was shown in every act of his life. He was drinking heavily at the time, and as his extravagance threatened to ruin the family his father put him on an allowance, which no amount of whining or bullying would induce him to increase. He laid all his father’s sternness at Lee’s door, and set deliberately to work to ruin him in his father’s affections. With the cunning of the snake, for which he was so well named, he crawled and wormed himself into his father’s confidence, and then with devilish malice began to poison his mind against his younger son. Lee and Marion had married by this time, and were starting out in life together. Bernard forged his brother’s name to a check, and made his father believe him a criminal. The father denounced him and turned him out of the house. Lee, indignant, hurt, grieved to the heart that his father should doubt him, high-spirited and stubborn, as all of the Carrolls are, left home with his young wife and went to New York to earn his living. A short time afterward a child was born to them, and they went abroad. It was while Lee was abroad, and all communication between himself and his family had been cut off, that Bernard again began to go the pace. He forged another check, which was traced to him, he was arrested, and fled the country. His father was relentless. Bernard had prejudiced him against and separated him from his younger and dearer son, had caused the death of his mother, and the old man was determined to punish him to the full extent of the law. But Bernard was never found. Once he was heard from in Iowa; some one who knew him saw him on a wagon-train headed for the gold-fields of California. Then all trace of him was lost. I presume that growing more and more degenerate he took to using drugs as well as liquor, became a squaw-man and settled among the Indians.