Tim was not disobedient to the summons. He called; and found, instead of the dashing young master he had once known, a soft and savage old man whom he at first utterly failed to recognize. Surface paced the floor and spoke his mind. It seemed that an irresistible impulse had led him back to his old home city; that he had settled and taken work there; and there meant to end his days. Under these circumstances, some deep-hidden instinct--a whim, the old man called it--had put it into his head to consider the claiming and final acknowledgment of his son. After all the Ishmaelitish years of bitterness and wandering, Surface's blood, it seemed, yearned for his blood. But under no circumstances, he told Tim, would he acknowledge his son before his death, since that would involve the surrender of his incognito; and not even then, so the old man swore, unless he happened to be pleased with the youth--the son of his body whom he had so utterly neglected through all these years. Therefore, his plan was to have the boy where they would meet as strangers; where he could have an opportunity to watch, weigh, and come to know him in the most casual way; and thereafter to act as he saw fit. So there, in the shabby lodging-house, the little scheme was hatched out. Surface undertook by his own means to draw his son, as the magnet the particle of steel, to his city. Tim, to whom the matter was sure to be broached, was to encourage the young man to go. But more than this: it was to be Tim's diplomatic task to steer him to the house where Surface, as Nicolovius, resided. Surface himself had suggested the device by which this was to be done; merely that Tim, mentioning the difficulties of the boarding-house question in a strange city, was to recall that through the lucky chance of having a cousin in this particular city, he knew of just the place: a house where accommodations were of the best, particularly for those who liked quiet for studious work, and prices ridiculously low. The little stratagem worked admirably. The address which Tim gave young Surface was the address of Mrs. Paynter's, where Surface Senior had lived for nearly three years. And so the young man had gone to his father, straight as a homing pigeon. How strange, how strange to look back on all this now!