He did so till he was twenty-five, by which time he had spent his money, laid in a handsome choice of debts and acquired (like so many other melancholic and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. An Austrian colonel--the same who afterwards hanged himself at Monte Carlo--gave him a lesson which lasted two-and-twenty hours, and left him wrecked and helpless. Old Singleton once more repurchased the honour of his name, this time at a fancy figure; and Norris was set afloat again on stern conditions. An allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was to be paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in Sydney, New South Wales. He was not to write. Should he fail on any quarter-day to be in Sydney, he was to be held for dead, and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. Should he return to Europe, an advertisement publicly disowning him was to appear in every paper of repute. It was one of his most annoying features as a son that he was always polite, always just, and in whatever whirlwind of domestic anger always calm. He expected trouble; when trouble came he was unmoved; he might have said with Singleton, "_I told you so_": he was content with thinking, "_Just as I expected_." On the fall of these last thunderbolts he bore himself like a person only distantly interested in the event, pocketed the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders punctually; took ship and came to Sydney. Some men are still lads at twenty-five; and so it was with Norris. Eighteen days after he landed his quarter's allowance was all gone, and with the light-hearted hopefulness of strangers in what is called a new country he began to besiege offices and apply for all manner of incongruous situations. Everywhere, and last of all from his lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself reduced, in a very elegant suit of summer tweeds, to herd and camp with the degraded outcasts of the city. In this strait he had recourse to the lawyer who paid him his allowance. "Try to remember that my time is valuable, Mr. Carthew," said the lawyer. "It is quite unnecessary you should enlarge on the peculiar position in which you stand. _Remittance men_, as we call them here, are not so rare in my experience; and in such cases I act upon a system. I make you a present of a sovereign--here it is. Every day you choose to call my clerk will advance you a shilling; on Saturday, since my office is closed on Sunday, he will advance you half-a-crown. My conditions are these. That you do not come to me, but to my clerk, that you do not come here the worse of liquor; and you go away the moment you are paid and have signed a receipt.--I wish you a good morning." "I have to thank you, I suppose," said Carthew. "My position is so wretched that I cannot even refuse this starvation allowance."