"I know," I responded solemnly. "I've been through it all myself. I was once old Zabdiel Blowfield's clerk, and I also had the misfortune to be his nephew."
"Oh, Lord!" The boy stared at me as though his eyes would drop out of his head. "Are you the chap that stole the money, and got chokey for it?"
I nodded. "I'm that desperate villain," I said, "and I've broken out of 'chokey,' as you call it, and have come back to revisit the glimpses of the moon. Therefore you see how necessary it was that Uncle Zabdiel should not see me. Do you tumble to that?"
He looked me up and down wonderingly, much as though I had been about eight feet high. "Old Blowfield told me about you when I first came," he said. "He said it would be a warning to me not to do likewise. But he put in a bit too much; he said that you were dead."
"He wanted to make the warning more awful," I suggested, for I did not feel called upon to give him an explanation concerning that most mysterious matter. "And don't think," I added, "that I am in any sense of the word a hero, or that I am anything wonderful. At the present time I've scarcely a coin in my pocket, and I don't know where I'm to sleep to-night. It's no fun doing deeds of darkness, and breaking prison, and all that sort of thing, I can assure you."
The youth shook his head dismally. "I ain't so sure of that," he said. "At any rate, I should think it would be better than the sort of life I lead. There's something dashing about you—but look at me!"
He spread out his thin arms as he spoke, and looked at me with his pathetic head on one side. I began to hate my uncle with fresh vigour, and to wonder when some long-sleeping justice would overtake him. For I saw that this boy was not made of the stuff that I had been made of; this was a mere drudge, who would go on being a drudge to the end of his days.
"What's your name?" I asked abruptly.
"Andrew Ferkoe," he replied.
"Well, Mr. Andrew Ferkoe, and how did you come to drop into this place?" I asked.