Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/147

 doing well, and that he didn’t like to think of me being left to spend my old age alone. It was a kind letter, and it warmed my heart. . Lonely I was; as lonely and sorrowful a man as any in England. I wrote back to say that I’d come to him gladly if he could promise to put me in the way of earning my own living. He agreed to that, and I left the old country, little thinking I should ever see it again. I didn’t see Joseph before I went. All I knew of him was, that he lived in Clerkenwell Close, married; and that was all I had to guide me when I tried to find him a few years after. I was bitter against him, and went without trying to say good-bye.

“My son’s fortune seems to have been made chiefly out of horse-dealing and what they call ‘land-grabbing,’—buying sheep-runs over the heads of squatters, to be bought out again at a high profit. Well, you know what my opinion is of trading at the best, and as far as I could understand it, it was trading at about its worst that had filled Michael’s pockets. He’d had a partner for