doing for me. My
mother, he said, was crippled with rheumatism, and Rooksby and Veronica
on the preceding Thursday had set sail for Jamaica. He had read to my
mother, beside her bed, the newspaper containing an account of my case;
and she had given him money, and he had started with violent haste for
London. The haste and the rush were still dazing him. He had lived down
there in the farmhouse beneath the downs, with the stackyards under his
eyes, with his books of verse and his few prints on the wall------My
God, how it all came back to me.

In his disjointed speeches, I could see how exactly the same it all
remained. The same old surly man with a squint had driven him along the
muddy roads in the same ancient gig, past the bare elms, to meet the
coach. And my father had never been in London since he had walked the
streets with the Prince Regent's friends.

Whilst he talked to me there, lines of verse kept coming to his lips;
and, after the habitual pleasure of the apt quotation, he felt acutely
shocked at the inappropriateness of the place, the press-yard, with
the dim light weeping downwards between immensely high walls, and the
desultory snowflakes that dropped between us. And he had tried so hard,
in his emergency, to be practical. When he had reached London, before
even attempting to see me, he had run from minister to minister trying
to influence them in my favour--and he reached me in Newgate with
nothing at all effected.

I seemed to know him then, so intimately, so much better than anything
else in the world.

He began, "I had my idea in the up-coach last night. I thought, 'A very
great personage was indebted to me in the old days (more indebted than
you are aware of, Johnnie). I will intercede with him.' That was why my
first step was to my old tailor's in Conduit Street. Because... what is
fit for a farm for a palace were low." He stopped, reflected, then said,
"What is fit for _the_ farm for _the_ palace were low."

He felt across his coat for his breast pocket. It was what he had done
years and years ago, and all these years between, inscribe ideas for
lines of verse in his pocket-book. I said:

"You have seen the king?"

His face lengthened a little. "Not _seen_ him. But I found one of the
duke's secretaries, a pleasant young fellow... not such as we used to
be. But the duke was kind enough to interest himself. Perhaps my name
has lived in the land. I was called Curricle Kemp, as I may have told