Louis and the tutor got as far as Berlin, with what mutual satisfaction to each other need not be specially described.  But from Berlin Sir Roger received a letter in which the tutor declined to go any further in the task which he had undertaken.  He found that he had no influence over his pupil, and he could not reconcile it to his conscience to be the spectator of such a life as that which Mr Scatcherd led.  He had no power in inducing Mr Scatcherd to leave Berlin; but he would remain there himself till he should hear from Sir Roger.  So Sir Roger had to leave the huge Government works which he was then erecting on the southern coast, and hurry off to Berlin to see what could be done with young Hopeful.

The young Hopeful was by no means a fool; and in some matters was more than a match for his father.  Sir Roger, in his anger, threatened to cast him off without a shilling.  Louis, with mixed penitence and effrontery, reminded him that he could not change the descent of the title; promised amendment; declared that he had done only as do other young men of fortune; and hinted that the tutor was a strait-laced ass.  The father and the son returned together to Boxall Hill, and three months afterwards Mr Scatcherd set up for himself in London.

And now his life, if not more virtuous, was more crafty than it had been.  He had no tutor to watch his doings and complain of them, and he had sufficient sense to keep himself from absolute pecuniary ruin.  He lived, it is true, where sharpers and blacklegs had too often opportunities of plucking him; but, young as he was, he had been sufficiently long about the world to take care he was not openly robbed; and as he was not openly robbed, his father, in a certain sense, was proud of him.

Tidings, however, came—­came at least in those last days—­which cut Sir Roger to the quick; tidings of vice in the son which the father could not but attribute to his own example.  Twice his mother was called up to the sick-bed of her only child, while he lay raving in that horrid madness by which the outraged mind avenges itself on the body!  Twice he was found raging in delirium tremens, and twice the father was told that a continuance of such life must end in early death.

It may easily be conceived that Sir Roger was not a happy man.  Lying there with that brandy bottle beneath his pillow, reflecting in his moments of rest that that son of his had his brandy bottle beneath his pillow, he could hardly have been happy.  But he was not a man to say much about his misery.  Though he could restrain neither himself nor his heir, he could endure in silence; and in silence he did endure, till, opening his eyes to the consciousness of death, he at last spoke a few words to the only friend he knew.