"Ah, yes; it's all well enough for you to talk about boards and hinges – you, who, if you stand in need of such things, have only to go and buy them. But, with me, the case is different; although I've seen the time when I was better off than any of you. Let the door alone, and go off about your business."
Mr. Harding and his friends paid no attention to the ravings of the old fisherman. They raised the broken door and leaned it against the wall, and moved toward the corner from whence the voice proceeded. There, upon a miserable pallet, lay a gaunt and crippled form, partly concealed by a ragged blanket which was drawn over his head. Captain Green gently unclasped the withered fingers that were holding fast to it, and removed the blanket, revealing first a shock of gray, uncombed hair, and next a bronzed and weather-beaten face, on which the signs of a reckless and dissolute life were plainly visible.
"Go away, I tell you," cried the fisherman, striving to draw the blanket over his head again. "Who asked you to come here? I know who you are, and I don't want any thing to do with you – I don't want to see you."
Something in the features, or the voice, must have struck Captain Green as being familiar, for he bent lower over the prostrate form, and when he straightened up, the face he turned toward his companions expressed the most intense amazement.
"It is Tom Newcombe!" said he.
"Ay, it is Tom Newcombe – or, rather, all there is left of him – starving to death here in his native village, with no one, among all those who once pretended to be his friends, to lend him a helping hand. You can't assist me in my distress, but you can come here to torment me with your presence – to show me what you are, and what I might have been. If I had only listened to the advice so often offered me, I might have been the equal of any of you," added the sailor, in a repentant frame of mind. "But it's too late now. Why can't you go away and let me alone? I'll never trouble you, and I don't want you to bother me."
He sank back upon the bed exhausted, and turned his face to the wall, while his visitors gazed down at him in silence. Who could have told that there ever would have existed so great a difference between these four men, who were once boys together? Three of them were beloved and respected by all who knew them, held positions of honor and trust, were cheerful, happy, and contented, and, better than all, could look back upon lives well spent; the other was a mere wreck of humanity, a feeble old man, when he ought to have been in his prime, living in that miserable hovel, friendless and alone, destitute of all comforts, dissatisfied with himself and every body, and reaping at last the reward of a dissipated, wasted existence. His bad habits had grown and strengthened, and prepared the way for others of a worse character, and now he did not possess the power, even if he had possessed the inclination, to shake them off.
A man seldom if ever abandons his settled habits and modes of life at that age; and the helping hands that were extended to him, and the encouraging words he heard on every side, from the friends of his boyhood, could effect no change for the better in Tom's condition. He is to-day a miserable, indolent, worthless being, subsisting principally upon the charity of Captain Jennings. His history is well known to the village boys, who see nothing in it that will induce them to follow in the footsteps of The Rolling Stone.