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."

"You're right," said Paul. "Faith and purpose."

"I believed in yer from the very first, when you were sitting down
reading Sir Walter with the bead and tail off. And I believed in yer
when yer used to tell about being 'born to great things!"

Paul laughed. "That was all childish rubbish," said he.

"Rubbish?" cried the old man, his head more crooked, his eyes more
bright, his gaunt old figure more twisted than ever. "Haven't yer got
the great things yer believed yer were born to? Ain't yer rich? Ain't
yer famous? Ain't yer a Member of Parliament? Ain't yer going to marry
a Royal Princess? Good Go