He had shaved off his bit of side whisker.  His face was grayer and thinner and his body somewhat shrunken, even in these few days.  He wore a white tie, and his coat and waistcoat were of clerical cut.  On the table was a pair of gold spectacles and on the sideboard a soft billycock hat.  He looked the not-too-well-off country parson to the life.  The only outward and visible sign of the old Jeremiah was the heavy gold pince-nez which lay between the top buttons of his waistcoat, which he hauled out and fingered as of old the moment he began to speak.

“Ah, Charles!  This is good of you.  I hardly expected a personal visit.  I was beginning to fear you had not got my letter, or that you had decided not to answer it.”

“It followed me to Sark.”

“Ah! you are back in Sark?”

“I thought it well to take my mother there, to be out of things for a time.”

“Quite so, quite so!  That was very thoughtful of you.  This is a terrible calamity that has befallen us.  But, as I said in my letter, I have every hope of being able to redeem matters if I can only get to where that is possible.”

“Where’s that?”

“Well, in the first place to Spain—­”

“And afterwards?”

Mr. Pixley hesitated.  “Perhaps—­for your own sake—­it would be as well you should not know—­for the present, at all events.  You may be asked questions.  If you don’t know, you can truthfully say so.”

“I gather that you have funds put away somewhere.”

“If I can get to where I want to go, I can at all events make a fresh start.  And I am prepared to devote the rest of my life to the one object I have named....  The last few years have been very wearying.  I have had trouble with my heart at times;” and he put his hand to his side to emphasise it.  “But if I can get quietly away I shall soon pull round and be ready for work again, now that the strain is over.”

“You know you’re asking me to do what I’ve no right to do?” said Charles gloomily.

“I know, my boy, and it is very bitter for me to have to ask it.  But I can’t get away without your help, and the alternative is not pleasant to think of—­for either of us....  I do not ask more than I would willingly have done for you if the positions were reversed....  On the whole, I do not think I have been a bad father to you.  Circumstances, indeed, have been too strong for me at the end, but—­”

“I am willing to do what you want—­and more, on one condition.”

“What is that?  Anything in reason—­”

“I will provide you with funds to get away, and I will send you three hundred pounds each year—­”

“Good lad!”

“On condition that you hand over to me all the property you’ve got stowed away—­”

“Damn!”

“So that I may hand it over to your creditors.”

“Why not write at once to Scotland Yard and tell them where I am?  But, after all, I’m not sure that even your world would applaud so filial an act as that.”