Dick was looking at him in a manifest concern. It was true affection. The boy might find it difficult to hail him across the interval of years between them, but he did love old Jack, though with the precise measure of patronage due the old.
"You know," said Dick, "it worries me like the deuce to see you coming up here like——"
He paused as if the matter were too complex to be gone into lightly.
"Like what?" Raven asked him.
"Well, we've been over that. You know who built this. You know what he did in it. He brought an old rip up here to live with him, and—oh, confound it, Jack! don't pretend you don't even remember old Crow."
"Yes," said Raven gravely, "I remember Old Crow."
"Well, anyhow," said Dick, "he was a family disgrace, and the less said about him the better."
"I showed you, the night you came," said Raven, "the story of Old Crow's life. You didn't quite catch on. Want another try at it?"
Dick had to search his memory. The only thing he had kept in mind about that night was his anger against Nan. There was a book, he recalled vaguely: some sort of stuff in a crabbed hand.
"Old Crow?" he said. "Old Crow never wrote anything."