I can pay my debts, I may return. But, meanwhile, my good old tutor,
what will you think of me? You to whom my sole return for so much pains,
taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money to pay for the
board! Yet you'll not grudge the child a place at your table, will you?
No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either,--God bless her tender,
economical soul! You know quite enough of me to be sure that I shall
very soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to prevent
its being an encumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child for my
sake. But I own I feel---By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first signal
from the vessel that-- Yours in haste,
J. W. A.

Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. There
seemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety,--a certain levity
and recklessness which jarred on his own high principles. And the want
of affection for the child thus abandoned was evident,--not one fond
word. He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention.

This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than three
years; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound at
bottom (the son's eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and the
child was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth's sake, but
for its own, and for charity's and Christ's. Ardworth's second letter
was as follows:--

En iterum Crispinus! I am still alive, and getting on in the world,--ay,
and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for my
debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First, for
my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally valid,
on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy has