One day, about ten years ago, I was sitting with my uncle in his garden, chatting with him as I frequently did in the evening, because he could not get about much, when we saw an old man, very crooked and infirm, hobble up to the gate on two sticks, and lift the latch. Thinking he was a beggar, my uncle bade him very sharply to be off. For a moment he hesitated; then he opened the gate and came slowly towards us, my uncle shaking his fist at him, and daring him to move another step. There was something strangely familiar, and yet unfamiliar, in his appearance; but as he still hobbled along, it came upon me all of a sudden who he was, and I told my uncle I believed it was Nick Wabberley. "The scoundrel! The villain!" cried my uncle. "How dare he show his face here!" and then he added under his breath, "I'm getting old, Harry," remembering, I suppose, that he and Wabberley were much of an age. Wabberley came towards us very slowly, and I saw that his hands were shaking and his features twisted. He looked at my uncle, and then at me, but it was plain that he did not recognize me; and then he began to speak, and it was very pitiful to hear him, because with palsy upon him he could not pronounce some of his words aright, and the story he told was pitiful too. He related how he had been left with Hoggett and Chick on the island by me and the stowaway, "who didn't ought to have left us, men what they ought to respect," said he. Chick died; then Hoggett fell into a melancholy and took to going off for days alone. One day there was a dreadful eruption of the volcano, which terrified them so much that they went down into the cavern below the hut to hide, and when the danger was past, Hoggett refused to go up; he had lost his wits and thought he was in his grave. Wabberley let down food to him in a basket, but he did not touch it, and so remained until he starved himself to death.