m into a moral idiot.

A Carteret, as you know, cannot do himself justice upon five pounds a
month, so Dick was constrained to play the part of Mentor to sundry
youthful compatriots, teaching them a short cut to ruin, and sharing
the while their purses and affections. But, very unhappily for Dick,
the supply of fools suddenly failed, and, lo! Dick's occupation was
gone. Finally, in despair, he allied himself to another remittance
man, an ex-deacon of the Church of England, and the two drifted slowly
out of decent society upon a full tide of Bourbon whisky.

Tidings must have come to the parson of his son's unhappy condition,
or possibly he decided that the Misses Carteret were entitled to the
remittance. It is certain that one dreadful day Dick's letter
contained nothing but a sheet of note-paper.

"I can send you no more cheques" (wrote the parson), "not another
penny will you receive from me. I pray to God that He may see fit to
turn your heart, for He alone can do it. I have failed ..."

Dick showed this letter to his last and only friend, the ex-deacon,
the Rev. Tudor Crisp, known to many publicans and sinners as the
'Bishop.' The two digested the parson's words in a small cabin
situated upon a pitiful patch of ill-cultivated land; land
irreclaimably mortgaged to the hilt, which the 'Bishop' spoke of as
"my place." Dick (he had a sense of humour) always called the cabin
the rectory. It contained one unplastered, unpapered room, carpetless
and curtainless; a bleak and desolate shelter that even a sheep-herder
would be loth to describe as home. In the corners were two truckle
beds, a stove, and a large demijohn containing some cheap and fiery
whisky; in the centre of the floor was a deal table; on the rough
redwood walls were shelves displaying many dilapidated pairs of boots
and shoes, also some fly-specked sporting prints, and, upon a row of
nails, a collection of shabby discoloured garments, ancient "hartogs,"
manifesting even in decay a certain jaunty, dissolute air, at once
ludicrous and pathetic. Outside, in front, the 'Bishop' had laid out a
garden wherein nothing might be found save weeds and empty beer
bottles, dead men denied decent interment. Behind the cabin was the
dust-heap, an interesting and historical mound, an epitome, indeed, of
the 'Bishop's' gastronomical past, that emphasised his descent from
Olympus to Hades; for on the top was a plebeian deposit of tomato and
sardine cans, whereas below, if