A few steps brought him before Jacob Nowell’s window.  Yes, it was just as he remembered it twenty years before—­the same dingy old silver, the same little heap of gold, the same tray of tarnished jewelry glimmered in the faint light of a solitary gas-burner behind the murky glass.  On the door-plate there was still Jacob Nowell’s name.  Yet all this might mean nothing.  The grave might have closed over the old silversmith, and the interest of trade necessitate the preservation of the familiar name.

The gentleman calling himself Percival went into the shop.  How well he remembered the sharp jangling sound of the bell! and how intensely he had hated it and all the surroundings of his father’s sordid life in the days when he was pursuing his headlong career as a fine gentleman, and only coming to Queen Anne’s Court for money!  He remembered what an incubus the shop had been upon him; what a pursuing phantom and perpetual image of his degradation in the days of his University life, when he was incessantly haunted by the dread that his father’s social status would be discovered.  The atmosphere of the place brought back all the old feelings, and he was young again, a nervous supplicant for money, which was likely to be refused to him.

The sharp peal of the bell produced Mr. Luke Tulliver, who emerged from a little den in a corner at the back of the shop, where he had been engaged copying items into a stock-book by the light of a solitary tallow-candle.  The stranger looked like a customer, and Mr. Tulliver received him graciously, turning up the gas over the counter, which had been burning at a diminished and economical rate hitherto.

“Did you wish to look at anything in antique silver, sir?” he asked briskly.  “We have some very handsome specimens of the Queen Anne period.”

“No, I don’t want to look at anything.  I want to know whether Jacob Nowell is still living?”

“Yes, sir.  Mr. Nowell is my master.  You might, have noticed his name upon the door-plate if you had looked!  Do you wish to see him?”

“I do.  Tell him that I am an old friend, just come from America.”

Luke Tulliver went into the parlour behind the half-glass door, Norton Percival following upon him closely.  He heard the old man’s voice saying,

“I have no friend in America; but you may tell the person to come in; I will see him.”

The voice trembled a little; and the silversmith had raised himself from his chair, and was looking eagerly towards the door as Norton Percival entered, not caring to wait for any more formal invitation.  The two men faced each other silently in the dim light from one candle on the mantelpiece, Jacob Nowell looking intently at the bearded face of his visitor.

“You can go, Tulliver,” he said sharply to the shopman.  “I wish to be alone with this gentleman.”

Luke Tulliver departed with his usual reluctant air, closing the door as slowly as it was possible for him to close it, and staring at the stranger till the last moment that it was possible for him to stare.