At such times I went clean crazy, but I could do nothing. I was getting too besotted to straighten up for any length of time. And there wasn’t any cure. How could there be? I couldn’t cure myself. I was being poisoned by the irremediable past. How abolish the past? It’s all very well to talk about living a thing down, but the only thing that can be lived down is the thing that wasn’t entirely so. My past was. It was in San Francisco that I got acquainted with a man named Hosea Hand and came into a strange relationship with his brother, one Richard Hand. Hosea Hand was a sailor, one of the crew of the ship on which I had come from Shanghai. He was younger than I, and after we got to San Francisco and the ship’s discipline relaxed I saw a good deal of him, first and last. One day in a lonely mood he told me his story. His brother had cheated him out of an inheritance, or so he figured, and he had run away to sea, like myself, as a boy. Two things about the story struck me: his brother, if what he said was true, might pay money to have him stay away from home--not that Hosea Hand had any thought of returning home but I could represent him as being bent on doing so, and myself as able to keep him away, for a price; the other thing--and this impressed and excited me much the more strongly--was that the Hand farm was on Long Island not far from the little town of Blue Port where Keturah Hawkins had her home. I turned the whole thing over in my mind during the sodden days and nights of a week. I do not believe that in the condition I was in all that time I was capable of reaching a bold decision--not even boldly evil. At last I wrote to Richard Hand. I told him that I, a stranger to him, not only knew his brother’s whereabouts but knew his story; and I had found Hosea Hand resolved to return home and settle accounts. I could keep the boy away, but must have something for doing it. It would be a sensible thing for him to do business with me. I wanted money, and I wanted information. His reply and its enclosure would be evidence of good faith.