‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘in the Sermon on the Mount, how the unkind children say it is Corban, a gift, and so get rid of the old people? That’s how they’ve done with me. It is Corban, a gift. I’m not penniless, though I’m friendless. There was a sum of money waiting for me when I came out: and that was all.’ ‘But you could inquire; you could search for them: you could----’ John felt his sense of right and wrong confused by this narrative. Suspicion, offence, indignation, righteous anger at all these sophistries had succeeded each other in his mind. Now there came over him a great wave of pity. In every such story he had ever heard of (he did not realise that he had never heard such a story at first hand) there had always been some devoted wife or sister or child waiting to receive the miserable offender, some sorrowful home ready to take him in. That was always the most pathetic situation, the saddest picture. But the dead blank of this--a sum of money waiting for the unhappy man and no more, no one to take him by the hand or give him hope, was tragedy indeed. It made his heart sick, and filled him with a confused relenting and compunction and eagerness to do something--to help, where no help was. ‘Why should I?’ said the man, with his strange smile. ‘I daresay she has brought them up very creditably, poor children. I should like to know something about my little boy: but it would be no advantage to him, would it, to find his long-lost father in me? No, I’ve got below that, or above it, if you please. I content myself with Joe--poor Joe,’ here he broke into a tremulous laugh, ‘whose truth you don’t believe in, but who’s always been faithful, after his sort, to me.’ John was greatly moved, more moved than he could have thought was possible out of mere sympathy and pity. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘don’t content yourself with Joe. I’ve no right to give you my advice, but since you’ve come to me and told me all this-- When I took you to those lodgings that night, it was because I wanted to try to get you to think--to get free of such company. Don’t be content with Joe; you will only fall into--you will only be led into----’ ‘Drink,’ said the other. ‘Very likely: and that’s all right. I should have been dead long ago if I hadn’t been kept from it by force for years. Now I’m old, comparatively, as the newspapers say. And it will make short work. All the better. That’s the only thing I’m good for now.’