He wanted to work, to go through the books, and put things straight so far as it was possible. He did not wish to sneak out of the world like a beggarly bankrupt. He lit his lamp and began to cast up figures. The year had not been a bad one. Old arrears had been patched up; hopeful prospects peeped out everywhere between the columns. Amazing success had attended the beetroot culture, and in following years the ground would be even more richly productive in that line. He was on the point of drawing up a new scheme of planting when he remembered that the day after to-morrow he would not be alive. He shut the book with a bang and jumped up. How farcical it all was; how insane both life and death, so far as he was concerned! He rang the bell violently, for he was hungry. Since the morning he had scarcely touched food. Christian appeared on the threshold, and reeled back in delighted astonishment at beholding his master in the house at this unaccustomed hour. "Now then, old friend," said Leo, filled with a strange tenderness; "won't those old pins of yours carry you any longer?" And as Christian in his confusion stammer forth inarticulate sentences, Leo put a ten-mark piece into his hand. "You have had to keep bad hours lately on my account. But in future, old man, you shall have your proper rest." Christian wept tears of joy over his master's unlooked-for consideration, and shuffled away to superintend his supper. The news he took to the kitchen soon ascended to the parlour, and the stir it caused in the house smacked somewhat of the prodigal's return. Doors were cautiously opened and shut, whispered conversations were held in the corridors, and now and then hesitating, hushed footsteps halted outside his room. All this he heard and ground his teeth. "Die, die, old boy!" cried a voice in his ears. "Die--die!" Christian brought a tray groaning with good things, in the selection of which he could see that his mother had had a hand. He fell to, greedily. There was the favourite dish of his schoolboy days, of fried potatoes with jugged hare and baked slices of ham. "Dear old girl," he thought; "this is her way of saying 'Stay with us.'" He laughed, but tears came into his eyes. Christian wanted to know what he would have to drink. "Don't ask me, old chap," he said, "but bring the very best that my deceased father left behind. Bring three bottles." Astonished, Christian begged for the key of the cellar, for its treasures were now kept zealously locked up. The wine came, the wine that had been his father's pride and joy. Why should he leave the glorious stuff to be drunk by strangers? And in long draughts he emptied the first bottle.