“He hasn’t done anything,” said the lawyer.  “He only thought of doing something, and has since repented.  You cannot arrest a man because he had contemplated the picking of your pocket, especially when he has shown that he is resolved not to pick it.”

“As far as I can learn, nothing has been heard about him as yet,” said the son to the father.

“Those limbs weren’t his that were picked out of the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge?”

“They belonged to a poor cripple who was murdered two months since.”

“And that body that was found down among the Yorkshire Hills?”

“He was a peddler.  There is nothing to induce a belief that Mountjoy has killed himself or been killed.  In the former case his dead body would be found or his live body would be missing.  For the second there is no imaginable cause for suspicion.”

“Then where the devil is he?” said the anxious father.

“Ah, that’s the difficulty.  But I can imagine no position in which a man might be more tempted to hide himself.  He is disgraced on every side, and could hardly show his face in London after the money he has lost.  You would not have paid his gambling debts?”

“Certainly not,” said the father.  “There must be an end to all things.”

“Nor could I. Within the last month past he has drawn from me every shilling that I have had at my immediate command.”

“Why did you give ’em to him?”

“It would be difficult to explain all the reasons.  He was then my elder brother, and it suited me to have him somewhat under my hand.  At any rate I did do so, and am unable for the present to do more.  Looking round about, I do not see where it was possible for him to raise a sovereign as soon as it was once known that he was nobody.”

“What will become of him?” said the father.  “I don’t like the idea of his being starved.  He can’t live without something to live upon.”

“God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” said the son.  “For lambs such as he there always seems to be pasture provided of one sort or another.”

“You would not like to have to trust to such pastures,” said the father.

“Nor should I like to be hanged; but I should have to be hanged if I had committed murder.  Think of the chances which he has had, and the way in which he has misused them.  Although illegitimate, he was to have had the whole property,—­of which not a shilling belongs to him; and he has not lost it because it was not his own, but has simply gambled it away among the Jews.  What can happen to a man in such a condition better than to turn up as a hunter among the Rocky Mountains or as a gold-digger in Australia?  In this last adventure he seems to have plunged horribly, and to have lost over three thousand pounds.  You wouldn’t have paid that for him?”

“Not again;—­certainly not again.”

“Then what could he do better than disappear?  I suppose I shall have to make him an allowance some of these days, and if he can live and keep himself dark I will do so.”