‘As soon as I knew that all this wealth had fallen to me I decided at once to come back to England. What could I do out there? I decided to come to England, but I couldn’t see farther ahead than that. I sold all the land; I had the business done for me by that lawyer I spoke of, that had known my son, and he recommended me to a Mr. Percival in London. I came back, and I found little Jane, and then bit by bit I began to understand what my duty was. It got clear in my mind; I formed a purpose, a plan, and it’s as strong in me now as ever. Let me think again for a little, Sidney. I want to make it as plain to you as it is to me. You’ll understand me best if I go back and tell you more than I have done yet about my life before I left England. Let me think a while.’ He was overcome with a fear that he might not be able to convey with sufficient force the design which had wholly possessed him. So painful was the struggle in him between enthusiasm and a consciousness of failing faculties, that Sidney grasped his hand and begged him to speak simply, without effort. ‘Have no fear about my understanding you. We’ve talked a great deal together, and I know very well what your strongest motives are. Trust me to sympathise with you.’ ‘I do! If I hadn’t that trust, Sidney, I couldn’t have felt the joy I did when you spoke to me of my Jane. You’ll help me to carry out my plan; you and Jane will; you and Jane! I’ve got to be such an old man all at once, as it seems, and I dursn’t have waited much longer without telling you what I had in my mind. See now, I’ll go back to when I was a boy, as far back as I can remember. You know I was born in Clerkenwell, and I’ve told you a little now and then of the hard times I went through. My poor father and mother came out of the country, thinking to better themselves; instead of that, they found nothing but cold and hunger, and toil and moil. They were both dead by when I was between thirteen and fourteen. They died in the same winter—a cruel winter. I used to go about begging bits of firewood from the neighbours. There was a man in our house who kept dogs, and I remember once catching hold of a bit of dirty meat—I can’t call it meat—that one of them had gnawed and left on the stairs; and I ate it, as if I’d been a dog myself, I was that driven with hunger. Why, I feel the cold and the hunger at this minute! It was a cruel winter, that, and it left me alone. I had to get my own living as best I could.