Michael brooded for a few moments, his eyes straying sadly over the landscape before him.

‘I was punished,’ he continued, ’and in the fittest way.  The two of my boys who showed most love for me, Edward and Robert, died young.  The eldest and youngest were a constant trouble to me.  Michael was quick-tempered and self-willed, like myself; I took the wrong way with him, just like I had with his mother, and there was no peace till he left home.  Joseph was still harder to deal with; but he’s the only one left alive, and there is no need to bring up things against him.  With him I wasn’t to blame, unless I treated him too kindly and spoilt him.  He was my favourite, was Jo, and he repaid me cruelly.  When he married, I only heard of it from other people; we’d been parted for a long time already.  And just about then I had a letter from Michael, asking me if I was willing to go out and live with him in Australia.  I hadn’t heard from him more than two or three times in twelve years, and when this letter came to me I was living in Sheffield; I’d been there about five years.  He wrote to say he was doing well, and that he didn’t like to think of me being left to spend my old age alone.  It was a kind letter, and it warmed my heart.  Lonely I was; as lonely and sorrowful a man as any in England.  I wrote back to say that I’d come to him gladly if he could promise to put me in the way of earning my own living.  He agreed to that, and I left the old country, little thinking I should ever see it again.  I didn’t see Joseph before I went.  All I knew of him was, that he lived in Clerkenwell Close, married; and that was all I had to guide me when I tried to find him a few years after.  I was bitter against him, and went without trying to say good-bye.

’My son’s fortune seems to have been made chiefly out of horse-dealing and what they call “land-grabbing”—­buying sheep-runs over the heads of squatters, to be bought out again at a high profit.  Well, you know what my opinion is of trading at the best, and as far as I could understand it, it was trading at about its worst that had filled Michael’s pockets.  He’d had a partner for a time, and very ugly stories were told me about the man.  However, Michael gave me as kind a welcome as his letter promised; prosperity had done him good, and he seemed only anxious to make up for the years of unkindness that had gone by.  Had I been willing, I might have lived under his roof at my ease; but I held him to his bargain, and worked like any other man who goes there without money.  It’s a comfort to me to think of those few years spent in quiet and goodwill with my eldest boy.  His own lad would have given trouble, I’m afraid, if he’d lived; Michael used to talk to me uneasily about him, poor fellow!  But they both came to their end before the world had parted them.