Waymark professed to have formed no plan whatever.  This was not strictly true.  For some months now, ever and again, as often indeed as he had felt the burden of his schoolwork more than usually intolerable, his thoughts had turned to the one person who could be of any assistance to him, and upon whom he had any kind of claim; that was Abraham Woodstock, his father’s old friend.  He had held no communication with Mr. Woodstock for four years; did not even know whether he was living.  But of him he still thought, now that absolute need was close at hand, and, as soon as Julian Casti had left him to-day, he examined a directory to ascertain whether the accountant still occupied the house in St. John Street Road.  Apparently he did.  And the same evening Waymark made up his mind to visit Mr. Woodstock on the following day.

The old gentleman was sitting alone when the servant announced a visitor.  In personal appearance he was scarcely changed since the visit of his little grand-daughter.  Perhaps the eye was not quite so vivid, the skin on forehead and cheeks a trifle less smooth, but his face had the same healthy colour; there was the same repose of force in the huge limbs, and his voice had lost nothing of its resonant firmness.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, as Waymark entered.  “You!  I’ve been wondering where you were to be found.”

The visitor held out his hand, and Abraham, though he did not rise, smiled not unpleasantly as he gave his own.

“You wanted to see me?” Waymark asked.

“Well, yes.  I suppose you’ve come about the mines.”

“Mines?  What mines?”

“Oh, then you haven’t come about them.  You didn’t know the Llwg Valley people have begun to pay a dividend?”

Waymark remembered that one of his father’s unfortunate speculations had been the purchase of certain shares in some Welsh mines.  The money thus invested had remained, for the last nine years, wholly unproductive.  Mr. Woodstock explained that things were looking up with the company in question, who had just declared a dividend of 4 per cent. on all their paid-up shares.

“In other words,” exclaimed Waymark eagerly, “they owe me some money?”

“Which you can do with, eh?” said Abraham, with a twinkle of good-humoured commiseration in his eye.

“Perfectly.  What are the details?”

“There are fifty ten-pound shares.  Dividend accordingly twenty pounds.”

“By Jingo!  How is it to be got at?”

“Do you feel disposed to sell the shares?” asked the old man, looking up sideways, and still smiling.

“No; on the whole I think not.”

“Ho, ho, Osmond, where have you learnt prudence, eh?—­Why don’t you sit down?—­If you didn’t come about the mines, why did you come, eh?”

“Not to mince matters,” said Waymark, taking a chair, and speaking in an off-hand way which cost him much effort, “I came to ask you to help me to some way of getting a living.”