“You have had plenty of chances since Winnipeg of making yourself known to me,” said Anderson sombrely.  “Why did you speak to a stranger instead of coming direct to me?”

McEwen hesitated a moment.

“Well, I wasn’t sure of you.  I didn’t know how you’d take it.  And I’d lost my nerve, damn it! the last few years.  Thought you might just kick me out, or set the police on me.”

Anderson studied the speaker.  His fair skin was deeply flushed; his brow frowned unconsciously, reflecting the travail of thought behind it.

“What did you say to that gentleman the other night?”

McEwen smiled a shifty smile, and began to pluck some pieces of straw from his sleeve.

“Don’t remember just what I did say.  Nothing to do you no harm, anyway.  I might have said you were never an easy chap to get on with.  I might have said that, or I mightn’t.  Think I did.  Don’t remember.”

The eyes of the two men met for a moment, Anderson’s bright and fixed.  He divined perfectly what had been said to the Englishman, Lady Merton’s friend and travelling companion.  A father overborne by misfortunes and poverty, disowned by a prosperous and Pharisaical son—­admitting a few peccadilloes, such as most men forgive, in order to weigh them against virtues, such as all men hate.  Old age and infirmity on the one hand; mean hardness and cruelty on the other.  Was Elizabeth already contemplating the picture?

And yet—­No! unless perhaps under the shelter of darkness, it could never have been possible for this figure before him to play the part of innocent misfortune, at all events.  Could debauch, could ruin of body and soul be put more plainly?  Could they express themselves more clearly than through this face and form?

A shudder ran through Anderson, a cry against fate, a sick wondering as to his own past responsibility, a horror of the future.  Then his will strengthened, and he set himself quietly to see what could be done.

“We can’t talk here,” he said to his father.  “Come back into the house.  There are some rooms vacant.  I’ll take them for you.”

McEwen rose with difficulty, groaning as he put his right foot to the ground.  Anderson then perceived that the right foot and ankle were wrapped round with a bloodstained rag, and was told that the night before their owner had stumbled over a jug in Mrs. Ginnell’s kitchen, breaking the jug and inflicting some deep cuts on his own foot and ankle.  McEwen, indeed, could only limp along, with mingled curses and lamentations, supported by Anderson.  In the excitement of his son’s appearance he had forgotten his injury.  The pain and annoyance of it returned upon him now with added sharpness, and Anderson realised that here was yet another complication as they moved across the yard.

A few words to the astonished Mrs. Ginnell sufficed to secure all her vacant rooms, four in number.  Anderson put his father in one on the ground floor, then shut the door on him and went back to the woman of the house.  She stood looking at him, flushed, in a bewildered silence.  But she and her husband owed various kindnesses to Anderson, and he quickly made up his mind.