"He helped your mother in a shop in that street," said the other pauper. "What sort of a shop?"
"A greengrocer's—it was the little shop at the corner."
"What was your brother's name?"
"William Jones."
The other pauper rose and held out his hand.
"Tom!" he exclaimed, "it's wonderful! Here have we two brothers been in this workhouse together for fifteen years and we didn't know each other!"
Then the man told his story. He had got into a bit of trouble about some money with another young man in the neighbourhood, and had been worried about it. So he had said nothing to his mother, but gone away and got a job in another part of London. There he had married and settled down, brought up a family, lost his wife, lost his children, fallen on evil days, and at last became a pauper.
For fifteen years the man who had mysteriously disappeared had been under the same roof as his brother, and neither had known the other.