temper I admit possessing; but even now I can not forget the one crime it has led me into—­for it is, I suppose, strictly speaking, a crime.  For it was the man Foggatt who made a felon of my father before the eyes of the world, and killed him with shame.  It was he who murdered my mother, and none the less murdered her because she died of a broken heart.  That he was also a thief and a hypocrite might have concerned me little but for that.

“Of my father I remember very little.  He must, I fear, have been a weak and incapable man in many respects.  He had no business abilities—­in fact, was quite unable to understand the complicated business matters in which he largely dealt.  Foggatt was a consummate master of all those arts of financial jugglery that make so many fortunes, and ruin so many others, in matters of company promoting, stocks, and shares.  He was unable to exercise them, however, because of a great financial disaster in which he had been mixed up a few years before, and which made his name one to be avoided in future.  In these circumstances he made a sort of secret and informal partnership with my father, who, ostensibly alone in the business, acted throughout on the directions of Foggatt, understanding as little what he did, poor, simple man, as a schoolboy would have done.  The transactions carried on went from small to large, and, unhappily from honorable to dishonorable.  My father relied on the superior abilities of Foggatt with an absolute trust, carrying out each day the directions given him privately the previous evening, buying, selling, printing prospectuses, signing whatever had to be signed, all with sole responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits.  In brief, my unhappy and foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible.  At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible, came to grief in a heap.  Fraud was written large over all their history, and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment.  From beginning to end he, and he only, was responsible.  There was no shred of evidence to connect Foggatt with the matter, and no means of escape from the net drawn about my father.  He lived through three years of imprisonment, and then, entirely abandoned by the man who had made use of his simplicity, he died—­of nothing but shame and a broken heart.

“Of this I knew nothing at the time.  Again and again, as a small boy, I remember asking of my mother why I had no father at home, as other boys had—­unconscious of the stab I thus inflicted on her gentle heart.  Of her my earliest, as well as my latest, memory is that of a pale, weeping woman, who grudged to let me out of her sight.

“Little by little I learned the whole cause of my mother’s grief, for she had no other confidant, and I fear my character developed early, for my first coherent remembrance of the matter is that of a childish design to take a table-knife and kill the bad man who had made my father die in prison and caused my mother to cry.