If you hadn't done me a few disinterested kindnesses lately, I should say that they'd paid you to persuade me to stop this, so as they might get their money back, and save the cost of a prosecution.

But I ain't so far gone as to believe that; and so I tell you, as one man to another, that if you'd come suddenly on such a mine of treason and conspiracy as I have this afternoon, and found a lad that you have treated as, and tried to believe was, your own son, you'd be as bad as me.

Every moment I think of it, it comes out clearer.

That woman that lives with me has palmed that brat of hers on me as my child; and he and she have been plundering me these years past.

The money that woman has made away with would build a ship, sir.