Ted answered. "Because it isn't really yours. You never earned it, I'll bet, and the wealth of the world is labour----" Ned emptied his handful on the turf and interrupted him. "I give them up! There they are, your sovereign remedies! What are you going to do with them? Why! spend them to please yourselves, of course, as I was doing, as every one does! So I repeat, it wouldn't matter a hang to the world or any of us three here present if I were to make----" A third sovereign would have followed the other two, but for the arresting power of a new voice. "Perhaps not; but it would be a most distinct injury to one Peter Ramsay, M.D. So just hand it over, will ye?" Close behind them stood a sturdy, thick-set man, with bright red-brown eyes and bright bronze-red hair. He had evidently come down one of the steep mountain sheep-tracks, leading his pony, for it stood beside him now, its hoofs half hidden in the moss, while it stretched its inquiring muzzle towards the glittering pile of sovereigns, as if suspicioning them as a new kind of corn. "Welcome, sir, so far as I am concerned," replied Ned calmly. "But it isn't in any lack of claimants that our difficulty lies. We have in fact too many! Our reverend friend wants the shekels, why he would be puzzled to say, since he preaches that they have no purchasing power for the one thing needful. My namesake over there wouldn't be averse to them, though he holds the possession of gold to be a crime----" "I never said so," broke in Ted hotly. "Excuse me! It follows inevitably from your premise of equality. That gives the _coup de grace_ to lawful personal possession of anything; since 'to possess,' means the having and holding of something extraneous to the personality, whereas if every personality has an equal amount of any one thing, that thing ceases to be a possession and becomes part of the personality!--which, of course, is mere hair-splitting! As for you, doctor, you also are illogical. Health and life are the goods you desire, yet money is no remedy for disease and death. Practically, I am the only one with a leg to stand upon. I am a pleasure seeker, pure and simple, so, as this gives me pleasure--here goes!" The third curved flight of gold finished his remarks so pointedly that silence fell upon all four, as they looked out on the golden light haze, which, finding a mist-wreath in its path, had driven it, all transmuted into gold, to blot out both land and sea, leaving nothing visible save that foreground of rippled brimming pool, set in its fringe of rushes. The peewit, fearful once more lest the new comers should have keener eyes, wheeled and wailed; the pony, dissatisfied with the sovereigns, nosed and nibbled reflectively at the coarse grass and the delicate campanula.