"Smoke, Thelismer," he pleaded. "Stretch out and smoke. I always like to see you smoke. You take so much comfort. I sometimes wish I'd learned to smoke. Old age gets lonely once in a while. Perhaps a good cigar might be a consolation." "So you do get lonesome sometimes, Vard?" inquired the Duke. "It's a lonesome age when you're eighty, comrade. You probably find it so yourself. There are so few of one's old friends that live to be eighty." Then they fell into discourse, eager, wistful reminiscences such as come to the lips of old friends who meet infrequently. The young man, sitting close in the circle, listened appreciatively. This courtly old soldier, lawyer, Governor, and kindly gentleman had been to him since boyhood, as he had to the understanding youth of his State, an ideal knight of the old regime. And so the hours slipped past, and he sat listening. The calm night outside was breathlessly still, except for the drone of insects at the screens, attracted by the glow of the library lamp. A steeple clock clanged its ten sonorous strokes, and still the old men chatted on, and the Duke had not hinted at his errand. The General suddenly remembered that he had in the cellar some home-made wine, and he asked the young man to come with him, as lamp-bearer. "The good wife would have thought of that little touch of hospitality long ago, my son," he said, as they walked down the stairs, "but a widower's house with grouchy hired help makes old age still more lonely." On their return they found the Duke, feet extended, head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling. He was deep in thought, and told Harlan to place his glass on the chair's arm. "Varden," he said, "eighty isn't old, not for a man like you; and it shouldn't be lonely, that age. I'm still older, and I propose to wear out instead of rust out." "I don't feel rusty, exactly," returned the General, smiling into his glass. "But when I think of all the marches, Thelismer, of the campaigns, the heartbreaking struggles of the war--of all the cases won and cases lost, the nights of study and days of labor in the law--the fuss and fury of politics--of all the years behind me, I feel as though I'd like to be used as my father used his old boots: Before he took his bed for the last time he went up into the garret of the old farm-house and laid his boots there on their sides. 'Let 'em lie down, now, and rest,' he said. And I've never allowed them to be disturbed." The Duke still stared at the ceiling.