‘It was simple charity, then?’ said the man, with a faint sigh: and then he smiled again. ‘At least it was a kind thought. You wanted to deliver me from the evil connections into which you thought I had fallen, in coming out, for lack of better. It was a very kind thought.’ John felt himself draw a long breath, almost a gasp of astonishment and relief and utter confusion of mind. He had felt himself the benefactor, doing indeed a very kind action, something that perhaps not many men would have done: and he was altogether taken aback by this generous appreciation of his good motive. ‘You were right enough,’ said the other, ‘quite right if I had been a more hopeful subject. But you’re too young to know all the ins and the outs of it. I have no real friends. Joe may, or may not, be faithful, poor fellow, but he’s the only human creature who sticks to me, and I am used to him. It was a kind thought on your part, but one that couldn’t come to anything. I partially divined it, so I left the place. I could not enjoy the clean sheets and the tidy room under false pretences; no less thanks to you, my young friend.’ ‘But----’ said John, ‘you are not surely going to let yourself sink? you, a man evidently of education, of sense, of understanding----’ ‘Sink--to what? Can one sink any deeper? I had all these things when I went--wrong, as people say. If they did not prevent me then, how do you think they are going to stop me now?’ John could do nothing but gasp and draw his breath, and stare at this calm statement. The speaker, after a moment’s pause, looked at him closely, and said, ‘You knew nothing at all about me then, what I had done or where I had been?’ ‘How should I?’ said John. The other laughed a little. ‘How should you indeed? but I had a kind of a hope you might. You don’t even know what I did to get myself into such a scrape? It was nothing brutal like poor Joe’s.’ ‘I wish,’ said John, ‘you would not tell me any more: if I can help you to work to keep out of the mire, I will do it; but if it is only how you fell in to it, why should I know? I don’t want to know.’ ‘Why, indeed?’ echoed the stranger, ‘and yet one has a sort of desire to tell. After all, you know, after thinking it over in every possible light for fourteen years, I cannot see the absolute sin there is in writing another man’s name. On the face of it, it’s no great thing--not so much as telling a lie, which anybody does without thinking. It’s only a more formal sort of a lie. Offences against the person are evident crimes; to injure another man, to put him in danger of his life, to give him pain, that I can understand; or to rob him of what is perhaps his children’s bread. But to write his name instead of your own! I have had a great deal of time to think of it. I cannot see, after all, the criminality of that.’ ‘It’s one of the worst of crimes,’ said John, ‘it strikes at the root of everything. Why, forgery----’