A talkative old pensioner on the company who tended a door told me he had been dead three years; that he died after a long siege of sickness and had barely enough money left to bury him decently in the village graveyard beside my mother. I was not shocked to learn of his death; we had been too far apart for that. I wondered if my long silence and absence mightn’t have aggravated his illness and hastened his end. I was sorry not to have been with him when he was sick and needed me. I was glad he died without knowing what I had done to my life.

That was many years ago, but I wasn’t thoughtless even then, and I recall now, distinctly, how I realized with shame and regret that I had never done one thing to repay him for caring for me till I was able to shift, no matter how lamely, for myself. Looking back now, as I did then, I am forced to admit that the only consideration I ever showed for him was this: I never put his name, which is my name, on a police blotter or a prison register while he was alive, or after his death.