“How are you living?” I asked him.

“I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in the new world,” said he:  “many a thousand mile of stormy water off from this.”

“I hope you have done well?”

“I’ve done wonderfully well.  There’s others went out alonger me as has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me.  I’m famous for it.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.”

Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come into my mind.

“Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,” I inquired, “since he undertook that trust?”

“Never set eyes upon him.  I warn’t likely to it.”

“He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes.  I was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a little fortune.  But, like you, I have done well since, and you must let me pay them back.  You can put them to some other poor boy’s use.”  I took out my purse.

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents.  They were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over to him.  Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp, and dropped the ashes into the tray.

“May I make so bold,” he said then, with a smile that was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, “as ask you how you have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering marshes?”

“How?”

“Ah!”

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire, with his heavy brown hand on the mantelshelf.  He put a foot up to the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but, he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at me.  It was only now that I began to tremble.

When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.

“Might a mere warmint ask what property?” said he.

I faltered, “I don’t know.”

“Might a mere warmint ask whose property?” said he.

I faltered again, “I don’t know.”

“Could I make a guess, I wonder,” said the Convict, “at your income since you come of age!  As to the first figure now.  Five?”

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him.

“Concerning a guardian,” he went on.  “There ought to have been some guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor.  Some lawyer, maybe.  As to the first letter of that lawyer’s name now.  Would it be J?”