The prison authorities had found Theobald’s address from a letter in Ernest’s pocket, and had communicated with him more than once concerning his son’s illness, but Theobald had not written to me, and I supposed my godson to be in good health.  He would be just twenty-four years old when he left prison, and if I followed out his aunt’s instructions, would have to battle with fortune for another four years as well as he could.  The question before me was whether it was right to let him run so much risk, or whether I should not to some extent transgress my instructions—­which there was nothing to prevent my doing if I thought Miss Pontifex would have wished it—­and let him have the same sum that he would have recovered from Pryer.

If my godson had been an older man, and more fixed in any definite groove, this is what I should have done, but he was still very young, and more than commonly unformed for his age.  If, again, I had known of his illness I should not have dared to lay any heavier burden on his back than he had to bear already; but not being uneasy about his health, I thought a few years of roughing it and of experience concerning the importance of not playing tricks with money would do him no harm.  So I decided to keep a sharp eye upon him as soon as he came out of prison, and to let him splash about in deep water as best he could till I saw whether he was able to swim, or was about to sink.  In the first case I would let him go on swimming till he was nearly eight-and-twenty, when I would prepare him gradually for the good fortune that awaited him; in the second I would hurry up to the rescue.  So I wrote to say that Pryer had absconded, and that he could have 100 pounds from his father when he came out of prison.  I then waited to see what effect these tidings would have, not expecting to receive an answer for three months, for I had been told on enquiry that no letter could be received by a prisoner till after he had been three months in gaol.  I also wrote to Theobald and told him of Pryer’s disappearance.

As a matter of fact, when my letter arrived the governor of the gaol read it, and in a case of such importance would have relaxed the rules if Ernest’s state had allowed it; his illness prevented this, and the governor left it to the chaplain and the doctor to break the news to him when they thought him strong enough to bear it, which was now the case.  In the meantime I received a formal official document saying that my letter had been received and would be communicated to the prisoner in due course; I believe it was simply through a mistake on the part of a clerk that I was not informed of Ernest’s illness, but I heard nothing of it till I saw him by his own desire a few days after the chaplin had broken to him the substance of what I had written.

Ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the loss of his money, but his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing the full extent of the mischief.  He had never been in serious want of money yet, and did not know what it meant.  In reality, money losses are the hardest to bear of any by those who are old enough to comprehend them.