ming point.
He was incorrigibly bad. He never played false to his father the Devil,
and the lusts of his father he did do, to the very last, never
disgracing himself by the slightest wavering towards repentance.

[Footnote A: This appears to have been written about 1910.]

Probably his return from Sydney to England was as much an escape from
his own associates in crime, with whom some dishonourable transactions
had made him unpopular, as a flight from the officers of Justice. A
story is told, too intricate to follow out, of a close resemblance
between himself and a friend in his line of business. This was utilised
ingeniously for the establishment of alibi's, the name of Wix being
adopted by both. Daverill had, however, really behaved in a very shady
way, having achieved this man's execution for a capital crime of his
own. Ibbetson, the Thames police-sergeant whose death he occasioned
later, was no doubt in Sydney at this time, and may have identified him
from having been present at the hanging of his counterpart, whose
protestations that he was the wrong man of course received no attention,
and whose attempt to prove an alibi failed miserably. Daverill had
supplied the defence with a perfectly fictitious account of himself and
his whereabouts at the time of the commission of the crime, which of
course fell to pieces on the testimony of witnesses implicated, who knew
nothing whatever of the events described.

There is no reason whatever to suppose that a desire to see his mother
again had anything to do with his return. The probability is that he
never gave her a thought until the money he had brought with him ran
out--or, more accurately, the money he got by selling, at a great
sacrifice, the jewels he brought from Australia sewed into the belt he
wore in lieu of braces. The most valuable diamond ring should have
brought him thousands, but he had to be content with hundreds. He had
drawn it off an amputated finger, whose owner he left to bleed to death
in the bush. It had already been stolen twice, and in each case had
brought ill-luck to its new possessor.

All this of Daverill is irrelevant to the story, except in so far as it
absolves Aunt M'riar of the slightest selfish motive in her conduct
throughout. The man, as he stood, could only be an object of horror and
aversion to her. The memory of what he had once been remained; and
crystallized, as it were, into a fixed idea of a sacramental obligation
towards a ma