While these thoughts flashed through my brain I remained perfectly still, with my face averted. It was desirable that I should have my countenance under perfect control, before I let him see it. I spoke to him from where I stood. 'Ah, Foster, is that you?' 'If you look this way, you'll see.' Thus directly challenged, I looked. He was a big, burly man, in appearance not at all like the typical lawyer. His clothes always had a sort of agricultural cut. Anybody seeing him in the street for the first time would have taken him for a shrewd, hard-headed, and--in spite of agricultural depression--prosperous farmer; the tiller, probably, of his own acres. His hair, still abundant, and which he parted neatly on one side, was white as snow; in his keen flashing eyes, in spite of his seventy odd years, there was yet what always seemed to me to be the light of battle. I met his glance without, I think, a sign of flinching, though I would rather have seen him buried than, at that moment, there. 'To know you, Foster, it is not necessary to see you when one hears your voice.' Without replying, coming to my side, he looked down with me, at the figure on the bed. After a while he spoke. 'What were you doing to him, Mr. Howarth?' 'I was trying to wake him out of sleep.' 'He looks to me as if nothing could awake him now.' 'Foster! You don't mean--that he is dead?' Nothing could have pleased me less than such a consummation. If Mr. Babbacombe had elected to die in such an extremely irregular fashion he certainly did not deserve the balance of that thousand pounds. I had stipulated that the end should take place in the presence of others; and, by inference, after they had been afforded an opportunity of satisfying themselves as to his being the actual Simon Pure. Otherwise, in the future all sorts of questions might arise,--not to mention the fact that, after what Foster had apparently seen, I might find myself in a position of distinct discomfort. The lawyer voiced my thought, as if he had perceived it in my mind. 'It would be rather unfortunate for you if he should be dead.' 'Unfortunate for all of us.' 'Particularly for you. You were subjecting him to rather vigorous treatment. Better men have been killed by less.' I turned and faced him, not feeling disposed to be brow-beaten by him. 'Foster, what do you mean?' 'Weren't you shaking him?' 'Shaking him! Foster! I was simply placing him in a more comfortable position.' 'Ah! And this is the position you have placed him in.' 'Your words and tone, Mr. Foster, require explanation.' 'Which they shall receive at the proper time and place. In the meantime, don't you think you'd better send for a doctor? Or shall I?'