"Sonny," said the old man, scratching his white poll, "when yer used to talk about princes and princesses, I used to larf—larf fit to bust myself. I never let yer seen me do it, sonny, for all the time you was so dead serious. And now it has come true. And d'yer know why it's come true, sonny?" He cocked his head on one side, his little diamond eyes glittering, and laid a hand on Paul's knee. "D'yer know why? Because yer believed in it. I ain't had much religion, not having, so to speak, much time for it, also being an old crock of a pagan—but I do remember as what Christ said about faith—just a mustard seed of it moving mountains. That's it, sonny. I've observed lots of things going round in the old 'bus. Most folks believe in nothing. What's the good of 'em? Move mountains? They're paralytic in front of a dunghill. I know what I'm talking about, bless yer. Now you come along believing in yer 'igh-born parents. I larfed, knowing as who yer parents were. But you believed, and I had to let you believe. And you believed in your princes and princesses, and your being born to great things. And I couldn't sort of help believing in it too."
Paul laughed. "Things happen to have come out all right, but God knows why."
"He does," said Barney Bill very seriously. "That's just what He does know. He knows you had faith."
"And you, dear old man?" asked Paul, "what have you believed in?"
"My honesty, sonny," replied Barney Bill, fixing him with his bright eyes. "'Tain't much. 'Tain't very ambitious-like. But I've had my temptations. I never drove a crooked bargain in my life."
Paul rose and walked a step or two.
"You're a better man than I am, Bill."
Barney Bill rose too, rheumatically, and laid both hands on the young man's shoulders. "Have you ever been false to what you really believed to be true?"
"Not essentially," said Paul.
"Then it's all right, sonny," said the old man very earnestly, his bent, ill-clad figure, his old face wizened by years of exposure to suns and frosts, contrasting oddly with the young favourite of fortune. "It's all right. Your father believed in one thing. I believe in another. You believe in something else. But it doesn't matter a tuppenny damn what one believes in, so long as it's worth believing in. It's faith, sonny, that does it. Faith and purpose."