end, which completed the surprise. They stood very obviously for
the knighted specialist whose consulting-room is within a
cab-whistle of Vere Street, and who once called me kinsman for
his sins. More recently he had called me other names. I was a
disgrace, qualified by an adjective which seemed to me another.
I had made my bed, and I could go and lie and die in it. If I
ever again had the insolence to show my nose in that house, I
should go out quicker than I came in. All this, and more, my
least distant relative could tell a poor devil to his face;
could ring for his man, and give him his brutal instructions on
the spot; and then relent to the tune of this telegram! I have
no phrase for my amazement. I literally could not believe my
eyes. Yet their evidence was more and more conclusive: a very
epistle could not have been more characteristic of its sender.
Meanly elliptical, ludicrously precise, saving half-pence at
the expense of sense, yet paying like a man for "Mr." Maturin,
that was my distinguished relative from his bald patch to his
corns. Nor was all the rest unlike him, upon second thoughts.
He had a reputation for charity; he was going to live up to it
after all. Either that, or it was the sudden impulse of which
the most calculating are capable at times; the morning papers
with the early cup of tea, this advertisement seen by chance,
and the rest upon the spur of a guilty conscience.

Well, I must see it for myself, and the sooner the better,
though work pressed. I was writing a series of articles upon
prison life, and had my nib into the whole System; a literary
and philanthropical daily was parading my "charges," the graver
ones with the more gusto; and the terms, if unhandsome for
creative work, were temporary wealth to me. It so happened that