“Is it certain,” asked Will, “that Strangwyn will pay?”

“Certain?  If he doesn’t I sue him.  The case is plain as daylight.”

“There’s no doubt that he’ll have his father’s money?”

“None whatever.  For more than a year now, he’s been on good terms with the old man.  Ted is a very decent fellow, of his sort.  I don’t say that I care as much for him now as I used to; we’ve both of us altered; but his worst fault is extravagance.  The old man, it must be confessed, isn’t very good form; he smells rather of the distillery; but Ted Strangwyn might come of the best family in the land.  Oh, you needn’t have the least anxiety.  Strangwyn will pay, principal and interest, as soon as the old man has retired; and that may happen any day, any hour.—­How glad I am to see you again, Will!  I’ve known one or two plucky men, but no one like you.  I couldn’t have gone through it; I should have turned coward after a month of that.  Well, it’s over, and it’ll be something to look back upon.  Some day, perhaps, you’ll amuse your sister by telling her the story.  To tell you the truth, I couldn’t bear to come and see you; I should have been too miserably ashamed of myself.—­And not a soul has found you out, all this time?”

“No one that I know of.”

“You must have suffered horribly from loneliness.—­But I have things to tell you, important things.”  He waved his arm.  “Not to-night; it’s too late, and you look tired to death.”

“Tell on,” said Warburton.  “If I went to bed I shouldn’t sleep—­ where are you staying?”

“Morley’s Hotel.  Not at my own expense,” Sherwood added hastily.  “I’m acting as secretary to a man—­a man I got to know in Ireland.  A fine fellow!  You’ll know him very soon.  It’s about him that I want to tell you.  But first of all, that idea of mine about Irish eggs.  The trouble was I couldn’t get capital enough.  My cousin Hackett risked a couple of hundred pounds; it was all lost before the thing could really be set going.  I had a bad time after that, Will, a bad time, I tell you.  Yet good results came of it.  For two or three months I lived on next to nothing—­a few pence a day, all told.  Of course, if I had let Strangwyn know how badly off I was, he’d have sent a cheque; but I didn’t feel I had any right to his money, it was yours, not mine.  Besides, I said to myself that, if I suffered, it was only what I deserved; I took it as a sort of expiation of the harm I’d done.  All that time I was in Dublin, I tried to get employment but nobody had any use for me—­until at last, when I was all but dying of hunger, somebody spoke to me of a certain Milligan, a young and very rich man living in Dublin.  I resolved to go and see him, and a lucky day it was.  You remember Conolly—­ Bates’s traveller?  Well, Milligan is just that man, in appearance; a thorough Irishman, and one of the best hearted fellows that ever lived.  Though he’s rich I found him living in a very plain way, in a room which looked like a museum, full