Sparling's death.
Then, just as the police were at last on his track as the avengers of a
long series of frauds, he died at Antwerp in extreme poverty and
degradation. The day before he died he dictated a letter to me, which
reached me, through a priest, twenty-four hours after his death. For his
son's sake, he invited me to regard it as confidential. If Mrs. Sparling
had been alive I should, of course, have taken no notice of the request.
But she had been dead for eighteen years; I had lost sight completely of
Sparling and the child, and, curiously enough, I knew something of
Wing's son. He was about ten years old at the death of his mother, and
was then rescued from his father by the Wing kindred and decently
brought up. At the time the letter reached me he was a promising young
man of eight-and-twenty, he had just been called to the Bar, and he was
in the chambers of a friend of mine. By publishing Wing's confession I
could do no good to the dead, and I might harm the living. So I held my
tongue. Whether, now, I should still hold it is, no doubt, a question.
"However, to go back to the statement. Wing declared to me in this
letter that Juliet Sparling's relation to him had been absolutely
innocent, that he had persecuted her with his suit, and she had never
given him a friendly word, except out of fear.
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