"I was thirteen years old when I ran away to sea. By that time my father's tyranny had become unendurable. One victim had eluded him by dying, but I was still left. On the morning of my birthday I left home to seek my fortune, my sole earthly possessions being four-and-sixpence in money, two ally-taws, an apple, and a thick slice of bread." "But you saw your father again after that?" "On two occasions only, and then only at an hotel where we met by appointment. Time had softened my bitterness against him, but not his against me. Had I been a dog at his feet he could hardly have treated me worse. Reconciliation on the terms proposed by him was impossible." "Were you not with him when he died?" "No. He died rather suddenly, and I was abroad at the time." "But at least, he surely did not forget you in his will?" "He left everything to different charities in the town where he died. There is some talk of erecting a statue to him." "My poor boy! And how have you contrived to live, all these years?" "As I best could; but all things considered, I have not done amiss. I stopped at sea till I was seventeen; then I got a situation as a storekeeper on a South American hacienda, and there I stayed till I was twenty. Growing tired of that, I set up a photographic apparatus and travelled some thousands of miles with it, earning my bread as I went. Those were some of my happiest days. When I was of age, I came into possession of two hundred and fifty pounds a year, left me by my mother. Since that time I have lived chiefly on the Continent, pottering about among antiquities, buying now and again a bronze, a coin, or a tazza in a cheap market, and selling it in a dear one; writing at odd times an article for one or other of the magazines; having no settled home, leading a vagabond, Bohemian kind of existence, but by no means an unhappy one." "You did hear that your uncle Lloyd was dead?" "Quite by chance I saw the announcement in an English newspaper." "And yet you never thought it worth your while to inquire whether he had remembered you in his will?" "Knowing that he had a daughter, and that he had never seen me since I was six years old, it did not seem to me worth while to make any such inquiry." "It might have been," said Miss Bellamy, drily.