“My son does, though; and even such a blessing as your own son would need, if you had one.  You understand?”—­for the prisoner’s eyes had wandered to the barred window—­“I mean the blessing of Theodore the First.”

“You are a strange fellow, John Constantine,” was the answer, in a weary, almost pettish tone.  “God knows I have more reason to be grateful to you than to any man alive—­”

“But you find it hard?  Then give it over.  You may do it with the lighter heart since gratitude from you would be offensive to me.”

“If you played for this—­worthless prize as it is—­from the beginning—­”

Again my father took him up; and, this time, sternly.  “You know perfectly well that I never played for this from the beginning; nor had ever dreamed of it while there was a chance that you—­or she—­ might leave a child.  I will trouble you—­” My father checked himself.  “Your pardon, I am speaking roughly.  I will beg you, sire, to remember first, that you claimed and received my poor help while there was yet a likelihood of your having children, before your wife left you, and a good year before I myself married or dreamed of marrying.  I will beg you further to remember that no payment of what you owed to me was ever enforced, and that the creditors who sent you and have kept you here are commercial persons with whom I had nothing to do; whose names until the other day were strange to me. Now I will admit that I play for a kingdom.”

“You really think it worth while?” The prisoner, who had stood all this time blinking at the window, his hands in the pockets of his dirty dressing-gown, turned again to question him.

“I do.”

“But listen a moment.  I have had too many favours from you, and I don’t want another under false pretences.  You may call it a too-late repentance, but the fact remains that I don’t.  Liberty?”—­he stretched out both gaunt arms, far beyond the sleeves of his gown, till they seemed to measure the room and to thrust its walls wide.  “Even with a week to live I would buy it dear—­you don’t know, John Constantine, how you tempt me—­but not at that price.”

“Your title is good.  I will take the risk.”

“How good or how bad my title is, you know.  ’Tis the inheritance against which I warn you.”

“I take the risk,” my father repeated, “if you will sign.”

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders and helped himself to another glassful.

“We must have witnesses,” said my father, “Have you a clergyman in this den?”

“To be sure we have.  The chaplain, we call him Figg—­Jonathan Figg’s his name; the Reverend Jonathan Figg, B.A., of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge; a good fellow and a moderately hard drinker.  He spends the best part of his morning marrying up thieves and sailors to trulls; but he’s usually leaving church about this time, if a messenger can catch him before he’s off to breakfast with ’em.  Half an hour hence he’ll be too drunk to sign his name.”