Morris Pugh flushed at the very memory of that never-to-be-forgotten search for God's providence on the mountain-top. "So it was you who made the ducks and drakes--I remember," he said slowly. "No! I did not take it; but--but I looked for it, and it was gone." "Gone," echoed Ned, and lay thinking. "Then it must have been Ted who took it," he murmured, going back into the past. "He must have gone that midsummer night--why, yes! of course----" Then suddenly his dulled mind grasped the whole sequence of events. "He--and Hirsch--that is how he got Aura--my money--damn him!" "Hush!" came Morris Pugh's voice sternly. "You stand too close to the judgment yourself for curses----" "I--I will say bless him, if that suits you better," murmured Ned wearily. "And if you don't mind--I prefer to stand alone." "No man can stand alone before the judgment seat of God," pleaded Morris Pugh earnestly. "I do not know what your life has been, but the best of us need an advocate; and there is One." "My life?" echoed Ned dreamily. "I want to forget my life--not to talk about it--if you would go--and leave me." Then he opened his eyes again. "Did you bring me here?" "Yes! I brought you--I found you unconscious. But there is One who will bring you safe into the fold." "I wonder if you would--be kind enough to let me--die alone." "Alone!" echoed Morris Pugh. "You can never be alone. And even for this world, would you not like us to call your friends--to let them know?" "I--I have my friends," he answered; "I want--nothing." So after whispering about him regretfully, they left him for a while, and he lay staring at a ray of sunlight which slanted through the window at the further end of the ward, and fell, in a golden glory, upon an empty bed. If it had only fallen upon his! Gold! Yes! everything was gold in this world. How people fought for it, selling their souls, their bodies for it! yet how little it meant. A hideous mockery, indeed, was this Christian greed of gold. And yet money meant much--Ted--damn him! "Mate," came a voice from the next bed, where a tramp, hollow-eyed, unshaven, who was recovering from an attack of pneumonia, had lain listening, coughing. "'Tain't no business o' mine in a way, but there ain't no good your lyin' an' damnin' a man as ain't done you no 'arm. 'Tain't in a way fair on you for me ter let you go to 'ell over a lie. It's the rumm'est start as I sh'ud be 'ere, but--ye see, Ted--'ooever 'e may be--didn't take that 'undred--I took it." "You!" he said faintly.