Francisco, and, seeing Mr. Carteret's
name in the morning paper, had ventured to call.

"And you, sir," said the father softly, "did you know my son?"

Dick admitted that he had known himself--slightly.

"A friend, perhaps? You are an Englishman." Dick pulled his beard.

"Ah!" sighed the father, "I understand. My poor lad was not one, I
fear, whom anyone would hasten to call a friend. But if I'm not
trespassing too much upon your time and kindness, tell me what you can
of him. What good, I mean."

Dick kept on pulling his beard.

"Was there no good?" said the father, very sorrowfully. "His friend,
Mr. Crisp, wrote kindly of him. He said Dick had no enemies but
himself."

Dick was sensible that his task was proving harder than he had
expected. He could not twist his tongue to lie about himself. Men are
strangely inconsistent. Dick had prepared other lies, a sackful of
them; and he knew that a few extra ones would make no difference to
him, and be as balm to the questioning spirit opposite; yet he dared
not speak good of the man whom he counted rotten to the core. The
parson sighed and pressed the matter no further. He desired, he said,
to see Dick's grave. Then he hoped to return to England.

Now Dick had made his plans. In a new country, where five years bring
amazing changes, it is easy to play pranks, even in churchyards. In
the San Lorenzo cemetery were many nameless graves, and the sexton
chanced to be an illiterate foreigner who could neither read nor
write. So Dick identified a forlorn mound as his last resting-place,
and told the sexton that a marble cross would be erected there under
his (Dick's) direction. Then he tipped the man, and bought a monument,
taking care to choose one sufficiently time-stained. There are scores
of such in every marble-worker's yard. Upon it were cut Dick's
initials, a date, and an appropriate text. Within three days of the
receipt of Mr. Carteret's letter, the cross was standing in the
cemetery. None knew or cared whence it came. Moreover, Dick had passed
unrecognised through the town where he had once ruffled it so gaily as
Lord Carteret. He had changed greatly, as he said, and for obvious
reasons he had never visited the mission town since his bogus death
and burial.

Thus it came to pass that Dick and his father travelled together to
San Lorenzo, and together stood beside the cross in the cemetery.
Presently Dick walked away; and then the old man knelt down,
bareheaded