No, he could not say that Mr. Surface had exhibited any sorrow over the impending decease of his wife, or any affectionate interest in his son.  In fact the ruined man seemed to regard the arrival of the little stranger—­“the brat,” as he called him—­with peculiar exasperation.  Tim gathered that he never expected or desired to see his son, whatever the future held, and that, having arranged for food and shelter, he meant to wash his hands of the whole transaction.  The honest guardian’s sole instructions were to keep mum as the grave; to provide the necessaries of life as long as the boy was dependent upon him; not to interfere with him in any way; but if he left, always to keep an eye on him, and stand ready to produce him on demand.  To these things, and particularly to absolute secrecy, Tim was sworn by the most awful of oaths; and so he and his master parted.  A week later a carriage was driven up to Tim’s residence in the dead of the night, and a small bundle of caterwauling humankind was transferred from the one to the other.  Such was the beginning of the life of young Queed.  The woman, his mother, had died a day or two before, and where she had been buried Tim had no idea.

So the years passed, while the Queeds watched with amazement the subtly expanding verification of the adage that blood will tell.  For Mr. Surface, said Tim, had been a great scholard, and used to sit up to all hours reading books that Thomason, the butler, couldn’t make head nor tail of; and so with Surface’s boy.  He was the strange duckling among chickens who, with no guidance, straightway plumed himself for the seas of printed knowledge.  Time rolled on.  When Surface was released from prison, as the papers announced, there occurred not the smallest change in the status of affairs; except that the monthly remittances now bore the name of Nicolovius, and came from Chicago or some other city in the west.  More years passed; and at last, one day, after a lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, the unexpected happened, as it really will sometimes.  Tim got a letter in a handwriting he knew well, instructing him to call next day at such-and-such a time and place.

Tim was not disobedient to the summons.  He called; and found, instead of the dashing young master he had once known, a soft and savage old man whom he at first utterly failed to recognize.  Surface paced the floor and spoke his mind.  It seemed that an irresistible impulse had led him back to his old home city; that he had settled and taken work there; and there meant to end his days.  Under these circumstances, some deep-hidden instinct—­a whim, the old man called it—­had put it into his head to consider the claiming and final acknowledgment of his son.  After all the Ishmaelitish years of bitterness and wandering, Surface’s blood, it seemed, yearned for his blood.  But under no circumstances, he told Tim, would he acknowledge his son before his death, since that would involve the surrender of his incognito; and not even then, so the old man swore, unless he happened to be pleased with the youth—­the son of his body whom he had so utterly neglected through all these years.  Therefore, his plan was to have the boy where they would meet as strangers; where he could have an opportunity to watch, weigh, and come to know him in the most casual way; and thereafter to act as he saw fit.