But he almost pushed me aside, left me to shut the door he had opened, sat down in a chair by the fire, and began gnawing the head of his cane. I resumed my seat, moved the lamp so that I could see him, and waited for him to speak. Then first I saw that his face was unnaturally pale and worn, almost even haggard. His eyes were weary, and his whole manner as of one haunted by an evil presence of which he is ever aware. ‘You are an enviable fellow, Wilfrid,’ he said at length, with something between a groan and a laugh. ‘Why do you say that, Charley?’ I returned. ‘Why am I enviable?’ ‘Because you can work. I hate the very sight of a book. I am afraid I shall be plucked. I see nothing else for it. And what will the old man say? I have grace enough left to be sorry for him. But he will take it out in sour looks and silences.’ ‘There’s time enough yet. I wish you were not so far ahead of me: we might have worked together.’ ‘I can’t work, I tell you. I hate it. It will console my father, I hope, to find his prophecies concerning me come true. I’ve heard him abuse me to my mother.’ ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk so of your father, Charley. It’s not like you. I can’t bear to hear it.’ ‘It’s not like what I used to be, Wilfrid. But there’s none of that left. What do you take me for--honestly now?’ He hung his head low, his eyes fixed on the hearth-rug, not on the fire, and kept gnawing at the head of his cane. ‘I don’t like some of your companions,’ I said. ‘To be sure I don’t know much of them.’ ‘The less you know, the better! If there be a devil, that fellow. Brotherton will hand me over to him--bodily, before long.’ ‘Why don’t you give him up?’ said I. ‘It’s no use trying. He’s got such a hold of me. Never let a man you don’t know to the marrow pay even a toll-gate for you, Wilfrid.’ ‘I am in no danger, Charley. Such people don’t take to me,’ I said, self-righteously. ‘But it can’t be too late to break with him. I know my uncle would--I could manage a five-pound note now, I think.’ ‘My dear boy, if I had borrowed--. But I have let him pay for me again and again, and I don’t know how to rid the obligation. But it don’t signify. It’s too late anyhow.’ ‘What have you done, Charley? Nothing very wrong, I trust.’ The lost look deepened. ‘It’s all over, Wilfrid,’ he said. ‘But it don’t matter. I can take to the river when I please.’ ‘But then you know you might happen to go right through the river, Charley.’ ‘I know what you mean,’ he said, with a defiant sound like nothing I had ever heard. ‘Charley!’ I cried, ‘I can’t bear to hear you. You can’t have changed so much already as not to trust me. I will do all I can to help you. What have you done?’